Ted Johnson (00:00.433)
at this moment in time and really acknowledge that Caitlin is a transformational player, right? She is transcending the traditional world of women's sport. And we'll have to, well, now I screwed that up. I had already talked about the other players,

Steve Feuerstein (00:17.098)
You didn't.

Steve Feuerstein (00:21.876)
Right, we were just segueing over where I had asked you here. You know what, I'll jump in and I'll say, you know, Ted's so interesting. You worked with such standout superstars. I mean, you're talking about the time when they were active. These were folk who, if they walked down the streets of the Twin Cities, probably a lot of folk would ask for their autograph. But here we are, perhaps eight, nine years later, and we took those same athletes, and I took them into,

any major metropoli in the country and said, have you heard of these players? What do you think might be the response from the average basketball fan sitting outside the Liberty or the Sun or any other NBA team, WNBA team rather?

Ted Johnson (01:05.541)
Well, know, Steve, I think you raise a really interesting point, right? I got to work alongside some of the greatest players in the WNBA. Maya Moore, Simone Augustus, Lindsay Whalen. These are all players that were on those championship teams. They are Hall of Fame players. And yet I think you're right. If you were to walk down the streets today, very few would probably

recognize those names and yet 80 % of them would probably have heard of Caitlin Clark. And I think we're going to look back and recognize that for good or for bad, given the time and what she's done, that Caitlin sort of is really a transformational figure, right, in women's sports. And she has become the fulcrum or the focal point of this tipping point, I guess.

And, you know, she, like your story with Tiger Woods, I really do think she's going to be looked back as that figure at that point in time that sort of changed the game, so to speak, despite the fact that we've had incredible players in the past, we've had incredible Hall of Fame players. And Caitlin even herself acknowledges that she stands on the shoulders of those that came before. She is only possible because of these other great players. But she has sort of transcended.

and is a figure that is far more recognizable than any of these other greats that have played the game to date.

Steve Feuerstein (02:40.608)
Talk to us about the financial consequence, the financial consequence of when you were with the championship team four times. mean, walking away with four rings with a professional club is an enormous high. I mean, it's an enormous milestone in one's career to get one. You had four with one team.

Sponsorship, financial consequence. What will we be looking at back in your heyday, let's call it at your peak? What might an official sponsorship look like? How hard were you working to secure, even though you were champions, were you working hard to secure sponsorship for the Lynx in Minnesota?

Ted Johnson (03:24.209)
You know, absolutely. Well, I would say that it's all a little relative because as your team improves, where you may have sold a sponsorship last year for 50 ,000 because you're good, the line has moved and maybe that now is a $75 ,000 sponsorship. and that's the same with any sports team in any league. But even with a really good team, revenues in the WMB were really difficult.

as you mentioned, we won four championships. We actually went to the final six of seven years. So we really had a seven to eight year stretch where, we were, you know, arguably the best team. Yeah, we, really were, we do, we, we, are one of the great dynasties of that league. and even so it was, it was a difficult charge, to produce revenues. And it certainly was better in those eight years than in the years that we weren't winning.

Steve Feuerstein (04:06.026)
Dynasty.

Ted Johnson (04:24.433)
But, you know, sponsorships are difficult, ticket sales are difficult. I always negotiated the TV rights and so trying to get the games on television, local television, were a challenge. And as a

Steve Feuerstein (04:43.252)
What type of deal, can give us some color, Ted, if you don't mind, a little color behind back then, what type of monetary contribution, what type of finances were involved with trying to get a local broadcaster for, frankly, even though you were a champion, one of the hardest parts of any sponsorship is having broadcasting with empty seats.

Ted Johnson (05:05.903)
Yeah, absolutely. I would say that the overall revenues of those WNBA teams were slightly over a million dollars in not in revenue, but we had to make a profit of about a million dollars, maybe a couple of million dollars during those championship years. And that was based upon sponsorship ticket sales, primarily as the revenue drivers. It was very difficult.

And frankly, I'll tell you the MLS team when they came to Minnesota just not that long ago in last, I guess it would probably be the last six or seven years that Minnesota got their MLS team. It was a challenge to get them on TV as well. And it was even more difficult to try to get our Minnesota Lynx, our WNBA team on. And unlike a lot of the other models where you may be paid to take the games,

we made the decision that we didn't necessarily need to be paid to get the games on TV, that we wanted the exposure. So for marketing purposes, it was more important to get the games on TV than to get a big paycheck. And so there were a number of games that we fought simply just to get on the air, which was, yeah.

Steve Feuerstein (06:24.5)
which was the only way to really validate going out and getting sponsors the value they needed by getting broadcast exposure.

Ted Johnson (06:31.419)
So it was way to sort of create value for our partners and most importantly, we looked at it as a way to broaden our audience and to market to sort of additional fans by getting the exposure on TV. So whereas the Temporals, we would expect a big, you know, seven, eight figure check, we were willing to go out there with the links that more of a break even sort of model simply to get the time and the exposure.

And we're doing deals like that to sort of create that exposure and build the fan base. But certainly things have changed considerably. And I would say that WNBA teams are far more successful. And it's certainly over this last year, we're going to see a big acceleration of revenues. We've even seen some significant growth in league revenues for the WNBA, which has helped support the new salary caps for the players, which were introduced that

are leveling up the player salaries considerably over what they were just two or three years ago.

Steve Feuerstein (07:35.104)
By the way, let's just pause for a moment and just observe what happened this past week or week ago. We had a prior annual commitment in broadcast revenues to the WNBA of 50 million annually. We just had a 400 % increase.

where there's now, as you know, a $2 .2 billion 11 -year deal with the likes of Disney, Amazon Prime, and NBC Universal. That's a seismic growth for your former, not only team, but league, where you spent 17 years. What will be a consequence, pardon me?

Ted Johnson (08:16.561)
testament to the growth, right? mean, it's to the growth and the popularity for sure, the strength of the league.

Steve Feuerstein (08:24.608)
I want to ask you a very nuanced insight that I don't possess the answer to. Not to suggest that any question I ask you, have the answer to, Ted. But at the end of the day, when you look at the fact that who negotiated the deal for the WNBA, it was the NBA. So the NBA just announced what is it, $76, $77 billion deal for the same length of time.

The WNBA, while their counterparts on the men's side of the game, if I do my math correctly, they're gonna end up with about seven billion a year. The WNBA, which is again, a four times growth from the last deal they had, they're at 200 million a year. So it's a beautiful deal, 2 .2 billion, but the overall deal that the NBA just negotiated, since they own,

established this league at its outset and have ownership of franchises to a certain percentage of each franchise. How do you process that, Ted? $77 billion for the men, 76, for the men, 2 .2, for the women, 11 -year duration.

Ted Johnson (09:41.393)
Well, two things come to mind. One is we talked about the trajectory, just the natural growth of leagues. The NBA has a 40 -year head start on the WNBA. So I would say that's number one. And so being able to grow the game, being able to develop really mature following and audiences.

And this kind of leads to my second point. So the NBA one has just had a lot more time to build up their audience because really, really the payments of the television deals, which are incredible to your point, they're really made up of two factors. One is the total reach and audience that those games bring to the networks. And two, overlaid with that is a certain...

A certain premium that's attached to sports. So in this digital age of streaming, where people can watch content on demand, there are very few programs that people have to watch live. And to advertisers, there's a premium associated with that because if you have a product that you need to advertise within a certain window, so we're in the season of campaigns, for example, a politician can't have their ad, his or her ad show up in November

they need the ad to show up during a certain window of time. And they're willing to pay a premium to ensure that that ad shows up in a certain period of time. Well, in the digital age of streaming, there's really two types of programming that people watch and have to watch in real time. One is sports and the other is news. And so news content and sporting content have an increasing value beyond just the eyeballs, but the premium of having timeliness

in watching that is important. So I would say that you have the WNBA is trailing behind the NBA and sort of just length of the time the league has been around and the growth of the fan base. Two, the other big thing I would say is that the NBA, the growth of the NBA broadcast deal is also predicated on the growth of the NBA around the world.

Ted Johnson (12:05.285)
And I think this is one of the things that really fascinates me about the NBA is, is if we look around the world, the most popular sport in the world, of course, is the beautiful game. soccer. Everyone else calls it football, but we in America call it soccer. The most dominant sports league in the United States is American football. But the one place that both the world and the United States meet when it comes to pop sports culture,

is the NBA, the second most popular league in the United States and the second most popular league in the rest of the world. And so that creates an opportunity for the NBA to really build this global fan base. You know, the NBA has television contracts in 217 countries and territories around the world. There's only 190 members of the United Nations. So the NBA is bigger and broader than the UN.

as far as reach. And so when we look at those crazy new numbers around the television deals, it's driven by the fact that the NBA really has developed a global audience and the opportunity to bring that game around the world. And then factored in with the fact it's just been around a little bit longer. Now the NWMB will continue to grow as you've just mentioned, a 400 % increase.

But what's not quite as certain is the WNBA is the most dominant women's basketball and the only professional women's basketball league in the United States. But unlike the NBA, there are actually very significant and successful women's basketball leagues in other parts of the world. And so it's not clear to me that the WNBA will ever have that global dominance as a league that the NBA enjoys.

Steve Feuerstein (13:58.418)
Is there any women's sport that has a parallel popularity to their male counterpart, if you will, that has global dominance?

Ted Johnson (14:08.313)
Yeah, hard to think on the team level, right? I mean, you've made a good point when you talk about individual sports, absolutely. But I can't think of anything. You know, there are some specific women's leagues, like in Australia and New Zealand, they have a women's netball league. Now, there isn't a male equivalent, so you can't make that comparison.

But I can't think of a sport where there is both a professional league for both men and women in the same sport where the women currently match the success of the men.

Steve Feuerstein (14:47.956)
How long will it be, that, you know, as we talk, my brain, my mind, my vision is taking me to a parallel to women's soccer, where we heard from very vocal, outstanding athletes in their trade talk repeatedly about equity in sport, compensation equivalence.

fairness of having like, being treated in like -minded ways where they have exercise rooms that are comparable to their male counterparts, where they have the ability to travel on charter planes, which we've started to hear about for the first time this year in the WNBA. What is it about women's soccer that the idea of equity, fair pay, equivalent pay,

to their male counterpart was acceptable conversation. But if today, Caitlin Clark held a press conference calling for equitable pay in the WNBA, I don't think she would have many sympathizers.

Ted Johnson (15:55.557)
Yeah, boy, that's a difficult one to wrestle. mean, in a capitalistic society like we have, the pay and the compensation are tied to the revenues that are generated. And so ultimately, the thing that frustrates me a little bit about the conversation that is to get equitable pay, then people need to give...

There has to be equity in following and fan base. I'm not sure if I'm quite saying that right, right? But the pay is generated by the revenues. The leagues aren't subsidized by somebody that's losing money. The leagues take the revenue in, they distribute it across, whether it be owners, players, operations, and that's how sort of salaries are determined and distributed. You know, with soccer, I

It's a slightly different conversation because soccer in the United States had not really taken off. And I don't think there was such a huge gap in the pay of MLS players, for example. And although I guess that was really more in relationship to the soccer team or the Olympic team, I guess, as I'm thinking back on it, actually. So, you know,

I don't have a good answer. The only way it changes though, the only way that there's going to be equitable pay is if there's equitable following. And that means that because as much as sponsors want to support something, they ultimately are in the business of moving product and they need to sort of reach eyeballs. so if we want to live in a world where there's equal pay, then we're going to need to live in a world where there's equal following.

And we're starting to see great advances towards that. And I think people like Caitlin Clark and others are right at the forefront of doing that. But I just want to say too, it's, I'm a, I just screwed that up. Yeah, I want to say, I'm a bit of an amateur historian

Steve Feuerstein (18:07.296)
Don't worry about it, it's called post -production.

Ted Johnson (18:15.405)
And it isn't that long ago, it's within my lifetime, right? That women were growing up before Title IX. And so I understand there's always an eagerness to the conversation that we want to move quicker, we want to see progress move more quickly. But we're only one, two generations removed from a time when women just didn't play sports as young girls. They didn't have opportunities.

They weren't afforded the opportunity. And so I sort of look at it as rather than bemoaning how much is left to do. I also like to take a moment to celebrate, to see how far we've come. The fact that we're talking about a professional women's sports league, that we're talking about players earning more money and getting a chartered jet. Sure, there is a long way to go, but we can't.

We can't not forget sort of how far we've come in a relatively short period of time. And so when I talk about sort of the length of the leagues, you know, it took the NBA 60 years, 75 years to get to where it is today. I think actually they just celebrated the 75th anniversary a year or two ago. The WNBA is half that age and already we've seen tremendous progress.

We've already come a far way and I have no doubt that we will eventually get there. But it's gonna take time and it's gonna take, you know, fans and citizens to become fans and to watch the games and to buy tickets and to show up. And with that, the rest will follow.

Steve Feuerstein (19:58.972)
Anyway, Norden Strategy, one of your companies, gets offered a complimentary three -year deal to choose between the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Minnesota Lynx. WNBA, obviously the Lynx, and the NBA Timberwolves. Could you ever see a

where you would actually opt for the Lynx sponsorship versus the Timber Wolf sponsorship.

Ted Johnson (20:29.745)
Yeah, it's unfair to ask me today because the Timberwolves are coming off their best season in 25 years. no, would absolutely say during that window of time when the Lynx were winning championships, the Timberwolves were struggling. Worst team in the NBA, second worst team in the NBA. I absolutely would have considered a Lynx sponsorship over a Timberwolf sponsorship at that

Steve Feuerstein (20:36.384)
Okay, go back 12 months. How's that?

Steve Feuerstein (20:55.562)
You said you would have considered Ted, considered. Would you have

Ted Johnson (20:58.029)
Well, yeah, well, I think because frankly, you know, each each league and each product delivers against very different demographics and they do very different things. And so I always caution sponsors, know, it depends on what they're trying to do. And and so it's not just purely about eyeballs. It's about your company's strategy. What are you trying to accomplish? Who are your key stakeholders?

And that really should sort of drive if you're looking at a team sponsorship, you should be looking at. And this model is changing a little bit as more people are flooding into following women's sports. But historically, women's sports fans are very sophisticated, very sort of media literate, very smart consumers, very affluent. So it's kind of hard to say.

depending on the company. But during that window of time, depending on what I would be trying to accomplish, I absolutely would look at a link sponsorship over at Timber Wolf Sponsorship.

Steve Feuerstein (22:04.672)
And by the way, when you look at that distribution, going back to Caitlin Clark, what's so fascinating about her social media following on TikTok and her other platforms, actually they're almost identical in 50 -50, male, female, and her following. Which leads me to a question I want to follow up on the prior one that, Ted, you were offered sponsorships at both the Lynx and the Timber Wolf. You got both of them for a three -year deal comp.

What is the value you're getting out of those sponsorships? And what might be the distinct value you're getting one over the other? Give us a sense of why you felt that at the links there was a superior return on investment that you were able to achieve that you simply could not get at the Timber Wolf. But from the eyes of the sponsor, since you dealt with so many of them, what is the tangible value that a sponsor gets from sponsoring any WNBA,

UNBA or NBA team.

Ted Johnson (23:09.433)
Yeah, boy, that's such a loaded question because for each sponsor, it can be so very different. You know, you're dealing with some sponsors are doing B2B business. Some are going direct to consumer. Some are there, you know, sort of a crazy story. But here in Minneapolis, because we're the corporate headquarters for Target and for Best Buy, we would have movie studios that would do

not really for the reach of the teams, but just simply to reach the executives of those two companies that they knew would be coming to Timberwolves games because we're the corporate headquarters and they wanted to get their

Steve Feuerstein (23:43.37)
You're saying as VIP corporate hospitality?

Ted Johnson (23:47.153)
Yeah, well they would do sponsorship activations in the arena knowing that the top executives from Target and Best Buy would be in the arena and see it. And so those sponsorships were driven by their need to get in front of 20 people.

Steve Feuerstein (24:02.442)
Fascinating, let me unpack that for a second. So Target, I understand, because the actual venue, your title sponsor, was Target. So you had the Target Center, title sponsored by the brand. Where does Best Buy fit in?

Ted Johnson (24:16.975)
Well, because Minneapolis is the corporate headquarters, the executives live in Minneapolis and they attend Timberwolves games. So they knew that should they sponsor something with the Timberwolves, there's a high likelihood that the executives that work at Best Buy and the executives that work at Target would be in the arena and seeing the product. And because those two retailers were such significant distributors of movies,

That was why they made their decision. So when I talk about the range of sponsorships, it could be from some sponsors trying to reach millions of people around the world through those 217 television contracts around the world. It could be a local company trying to do something, or it could be a company that's trying to get in front of 20 key executives and they're so important that they're willing to do a sponsorship. So it's hard to generalize, but I would say if I had

that generally the MBA sponsorship is gonna get you a broader and maybe thinner audience, whereas a W -MBA relationship or partnership is gonna give you a narrower audience, but a deeper relationship, if that makes sense. So one is broad and wide, and the other is narrow and deep. And that's a very...

Steve Feuerstein (25:41.408)
And for those of

Ted Johnson (25:43.681)
simple generalization, but given that sponsorships are so different and they are constructed so differently for so many different reasons, but I would say that's kind of generally the difference.

Steve Feuerstein (25:56.096)
Can you harken back and share with us a sponsorship experience where you're represented the norm, let's call it not B2B, let's call it the brand that was seeking TV exposure, a brand that was looking for VIP corporate hospitality, a brand that was looking to activate and do point of sale, some form of point of sale promotional engagement. They were activating, they were making use of the sponsorship.

Where did sponsorship in your 17 years, where did it work with which brand or brands and how did it truly materialize value?

Ted Johnson (26:39.121)
Well again, Steve, a loaded question. Hard to give a great answer. And I would even say, as I think back to those years, right, that's already 10 years ago, and I would say those have already changed considerably since. Again, because back then the fan base was narrower,

Ted Johnson (27:03.793)
trying to think of a specific sponsor that I

Steve Feuerstein (27:08.032)
You know, I'm gonna reinvent the question. Ted, tell me that if you were a sponsor and I were repr - I actually was you. And I'm in 2024 and I was the chief marketing officer for the Timberwolves, reporting right up to Alex Rodriguez, Mark Lurie. And by the way, did Bloomberg come in as an investor? Is he now a part of the team? We'll see.

Ted Johnson (27:09.839)
Yeah. Yeah.

Ted Johnson (27:31.545)
Well, they technically don't own the team yet. That's under mediation. The existing owner, Glenn Taylor, still believes he owns the team.

Steve Feuerstein (27:40.264)
Right, so there's been a lot of discussion publicly about how this transition takes place, but I'm reporting to both Glenn and Alex and his partner, Mark Lorry. What would I tell them are the perils, the perils? Where was the fluff? Where in this industry is it so seductive?

Ted Johnson (27:51.396)
and

Ted Johnson (27:54.883)
Yeah,

Steve Feuerstein (28:05.684)
But at the end of the day, if we were coming to sell you, since you know the business so well, and you were gonna construct a contract with the Timberwolves and Lynx, tell me where you would have razor sharp pen looking at that contract and saying to Steve, come on, Steve, you and I, you and I both, you don't expect me to pay for that because the delivery just isn't there.

Ted Johnson (28:32.369)
Steve, what I would say is hire Ted Johnson at Norden Strategies and I'll give you the answer. There we go. Yeah.

Steve Feuerstein (28:35.808)
Okay, so we'll do a border deal, all right? So tell me, but tell, guide us, and it doesn't have to be for basketball. Just give us generally in sport sponsorship. What are the perils if you were guiding sponsors to say in the real world, let me tell you, you're gonna be one of 30 sponsors.

Or you think you're standing out, but these VIPs are invited by 20 of your competitors to the same games they're after or in other sports and they get confused. They don't even remember what venues they went to. What are the caveat emptor's buyer beware when it comes to a sponsorship decision?

Ted Johnson (29:18.371)
Yeah, it's, and you're gonna hate this, but it's a large world of gray. And I say that meaning every piece of inventory, I would tell you, has a great fit for some sponsors and is absolutely the wrong fit for other sponsors. And sometimes sponsors get emotionally connected to your point and they just get carried away.

But that same inventory that would be a really poor decision based upon a motion for one sponsor might actually be a really great fit for another sponsor. Because there are some sponsors whose goal and strategy is to get some of the sparkle. And that sparkle is probably overpriced for someone that's pragmatic in wanting to sell widgets.

But for financial services dealing with high net worth individuals, that sparkle is absolutely essential and the value is completely there. So it really is an impossible question to answer. But like everything, there are certainly, there are some parts of a sponsorship package that are treated more like we call spots and dots, like you would in television advertising. It's just a run of inventory.

And there's always a premium attached to sports, right? I would always tell people you just have to walk in knowing that there is a premium attached to advertise and marketing with sports teams. And it's because of the affiliation with a premium brand like a sports team. And so if you're going in and you're Joe the plumber and trying to sell plumbing services and you're just concerned about, you know, an ad and getting phone calls.

back, the sports sponsorship probably doesn't make sense. There's a lot of other ways to advertise that make better sense for you. So already you really are looking at people that believe there is a certain amount of sparkle or allure to be associated with the professional team and a premium brand. But then beyond that, it really does come down to what are you trying to accomplish? Who is your target audience?

Ted Johnson (31:32.217)
And that kind of drives what inventory is available. I mean, you know, the inventory with Teams is endless. It's no longer just a TV ad or a program ad. There's content broken down through the broadcast. Every team is their own in -house news organization with their own direct media streams right through social media directly to the consumer. And there's content available to be sponsored.

It's a very sophisticated world with endless amounts of inventory, which is great for teams that are sophisticated enough to work with a partner. But it also relies on the partner being somewhat sophisticated and understanding what they're trying to accomplish and what pieces of inventory are the hardest working for them. But you're right. There's always a certain allure. There's always a certain amount of sparkle.

But it's amazing. I've run into sponsorships where it's driven by the CEO or the owner and for whatever reason in their head they're fixing it on something and they see value even though you don't see it. But you know what, if it's value for them and they think it helps in the boardroom or with their, you know, their executive team or their employees, it's hard to tell. So you do your best in trying to understand what they're trying to accomplish and match it up with right inventory.

Steve Feuerstein (32:57.664)
Ted, as we come to a close, you were involved intimately in the renovation of the Target Center, which commenced in 2015. You had monies coming from the city government, municipal government. You had your management group with a venue contributing, if I recall, around five million to the process. Obviously, your owner, Glenn Taylor,

you know, he contributed significant funds to the renovation. And in the process, you also built a training center with the Mayo Clinic in perhaps what I would call, in discussing with some of my colleagues today, one of the more innovative sponsorships we've ever seen. That you integrated, and just for our listeners, I'll share with you, and I should really let you, Ted, share it, not me, since you were involved in it, but I'll just, I'll set it up. And that is that,

We had obviously the Mayo Clinic, is based in the Twin Cities, headquartered in the Twin Cities, become part of the training facility of the Timberwolves and the Lynx.

and I'm gonna hand it over to you to talk of the novelty because what I learned today was not only for the athletes, but actually it became a service to the community because you had people walking off the street into the Mayo Clinic at your training center to get services, receive services from the Mayo Clinic, just residents of your municipality.

Ted Johnson (34:27.377)
Yeah, it really was sort of a landmark project. So when we decided to build our training center, we looked out across the league, particularly looking at the NBA and the WNBA. And the typical training center in the NBA at that time was about 30 ,000 square feet. But we thought that Cleveland had done something interesting with the Cleveland Clinic, and they had actually built about a 50 ,000 square foot training center.

and they had done a name and title sponsorship with the Cleveland Clinic. And as we began to explore in ID8 locally, we thought, well, why would you just have a name and title? Why would you not talk to someone about providing the world's best sort of healthcare to your athletes? And that really led us down the path that the development of our training center...

which at the time Adam Silver called the gold standard. And we were the first training center in all of professional sports to actually embed a professional sports practice sports medicine facility directly into our training center. And so you're right. We built a hundred and 30 ,000 square foot. more than twice as big as any other training center in the NBA at the time.

30 ,000 square feet of it was a sports medicine center with the Mayo Clinic that was embedded directly into the training facility. of course the advance of the organization, especially in a community or a state like Minnesota, we struggled to convince players to come here at the time our team was not performing well. And we're competing to recruit players with all these other big teams and successful teams.

The Warriors were winning championships. And so our ability to go to young draft picks or to players and say, look, we know the difference between good and great in the NBA could be a fraction of a second, a millimeter off of your vertical, a split second in reaction time. And the way that you're going to develop that is to have the world's best scientists, the Mayo Clinic here at the facility.

Ted Johnson (36:47.857)
training you and helping you become the best athlete you can be. And when you get to the dollars and cents of an athlete and you go look at that, that difference between good and great or the ability to extend your playing career by one or two years, which is one more contract could be tens and tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars difference between this facility and the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Lynx, or going to another team that doesn't have this type of facility.

And so it became a great recruitment tool as we tried to reposition our team and build a championship caliber team and to have those world famous scientists and clinicians adjacent, right built into our training center itself. And you're right, it absolutely actually functioned as a regular male clinic facility as well. So they were taking patients as right there at our training center. And so for the patients, of course,

you could be coming in to be working on something and rehabbing next to Ricky Rubio at the time or Carl Anthony Towns. And so it's a great marketing tool for the Mayo Clinic, of course, not that they need much marketing help, but it became an important sort of part of their ethos and culture that we are the researchers working with the best athletes and taking the learnings of the best athletes.

Steve Feuerstein (37:51.572)
Kevin Garnett.

Ted Johnson (38:11.471)
and bringing it out to the population at large. And that's the value of what Mayo Clinic does. So that training facility really was much more than a basketball practice facility. It became something much greater. And I think the greatest form of flattery, of course, is people copying the idea. And today, almost all training centers, whether it's NFL, NHL, MLS, almost all of them now integrate a professional sports medicine

facility within their training center. And we were the first ones in the country to do that. And as a matter of fact, the first year we opened, had 100 representatives from 100 different sports teams from around the world come and tour our facility. And within three years, the Vikings opened up their training facility. The Wild had opened up their training facility. Sacramento and other teams have followed.

What has kind of become now an industry standard all started with that training center that we built with the Mayo Clinic with a very sophisticated and innovative sponsorship strategy.

Steve Feuerstein (39:20.362)
Ted, as our viewers are so interested in the business and finance of sport, when you did those deals, particularly as the naming rights for the training facility in the name of the Mayo Clinic, at that time, was it more of just getting a barter service for your athletes and in turn, they received naming rights, or is there also a cash contribution as part of the relationship? Significant.

Ted Johnson (39:42.449)
It was a significant cash contribution. would say that that relationship at that time, of course, it was right before we introduced Jersey Patch partnerships. No, that relationship and sponsorship was second only to our naming rights. It was the second largest partnership we had.

Steve Feuerstein (40:01.856)
And the naming rights, by the way, just for our viewers, is reported to be, at the time, 1 .5 million with Target at that time. Is that in the ballpark thereabouts of what they may have been paying?

Ted Johnson (40:12.625)
I would say that's significantly lower than a really, mean, naming rights are complicated too because there's typically a naked naming rights, but then it gets packaged up with other assets. But I would say that our naming rights was in excess of that at that point. And Mayo Clinic was in excess of that at that point. And it was a fully integrated partnership with Mayo because it included assets from both of our teams as well as the training center.

They took the name and title on the front of the Lynx jersey. So in many of those championship runs, you saw Mayo Clinic on the front jersey of the Minnesota Lynx. had a... Yes, they are. Actually, I take that back. I'll have to go back and look at a jersey. I believe they still are the name and title on the front of the Lynx jersey. They had Timberwolves assets. And then of course the premier was...

Steve Feuerstein (40:52.308)
Are they still there?

Ted Johnson (41:09.231)
was the training center name. But one of the other interesting things we did was when we developed that training center, was part of a larger redevelopment of the entire city block. And one of the things that we negotiated in that deal with the developers of the block was the access to the naming rights for the entire block. And we got pass -through rights. So in Mayo Clinic, Mayo Clinic did not only get the name on the training center, but they actually

got to name the building, the entire block building, Mayo Clinic Square. So the Mayo Clinic is ownership of Mayo Clinic Square, the training center, and then a number of assets with the Timberwolves and Lynx. It was a highly sophisticated, very well integrated partnership with all of the assets, all the teams that we operated at the time. And it was a very, very large, significant partnership of ours.

Steve Feuerstein (42:09.312)
Well, speaking of large partnerships, we're gonna wish you the best of tidings when you're off to Chicago in about three weeks as a delegate of the state of Minnesota to the Democratic National Convention with your Norden strategy, par three, Timberwolves, Lynx, G League, much, much more to talk about. Ted, it was very enlightening, enjoyed the discussion enormously, and I wanna thank you for joining us today on the Transaction Report.

Ted Johnson (42:37.787)
Well, Steve, thanks for having me and it was a great conversation. I love what you do in bringing light to sort of the business of sport. And I just had a great

Steve Feuerstein (42:50.506)
Thank you, Ted. Thank you very much. Chandler, we'll have our genie reappear. Ted, very interesting. There were so many other subjects to hit with

Ted Johnson (42:56.249)
Yeah.