00:00Well, Bob Barnett was a friend of mine from law school.
00:02I've known him for about 50 years, and Bob developed a practice where he represented
00:08former presidents of the United States, senators, secretaries of state,
00:12in getting book deals or media deals, and therefore he represented me for many years
00:16in every book that I ever wrote, and many other people much more prominent than me.
00:20So when he died about a year ago from a tragic cancer,
00:24it really was a real loss for people in Washington, D.C.
00:27Wonderful.
00:28Inside the owner's box, our team, I hear, steeled.
00:31We have Orioles fans on our team, Paul.
00:33I know that, absolutely.
00:34Exactly right.
00:36So, David, in your book, you interview owners of major league sports teams
00:41across the sports spectrum, Robert Kraft of the Patriots,
00:45Ted Leonsis of the Washington Capitals and the Wizards,
00:48and my Lawrenceville classmate, Joe Sy of the Brooklyn Nets.
00:52What's some of the commonalities, David, that you found in your discussions
00:56with some of these owners here?
00:58Well, very few owners, actually, as children, expected to be owners.
01:02I never expected to be an owner.
01:04Young people probably want to be athletes, not owners.
01:08But eventually, when they get older, they realize their athletic skills are not as great
01:11as they once wanted them to be.
01:12And then the owners that actually become owners, the people that become owners,
01:16they're really more obsessed with winning than they are with making money.
01:20I interviewed owners, and I wrote a book, in part because when I was becoming an owner,
01:24I was looking for books on what it was like to be an owner,
01:27and there were relatively few owner books that I could find.
01:31And so I thought if I could interview other owners, I would get a sense of why they became owners,
01:35and I would give my own story about why I became an owner of the Baltimore Orioles,
01:39my hometown baseball team.
01:41David, you know, there once was a time when owning a major sports franchise
01:46was the game for millionaires, and then it became the game for billionaires.
01:51And now we've got institutional money coming into the ownership.
01:54I think about the Los Angeles Dodgers.
01:56I think about the NFL allowing private equity to own minority stakes,
01:59and, of course, corporate ownership of the English Premier League teams.
02:04Where does this go from here, do you think?
02:06Well, the reason this is happening is in part because the values of franchises have gone up so much
02:11that very few individuals can buy a team.
02:13So, for example, NFL franchises, which are now worth $10 billion plus,
02:19very few individuals can write a check that can buy a team for $10 billion.
02:23Therefore, you need to get outside money.
02:25The NFL now allows teams to buy, certain private equity firms to buy up to 10%.
02:31Other leagues allow sovereign wealth funds to invest, all in minority stakes.
02:35We haven't gone to the point yet where a private equity firm or sovereign wealth fund
02:40can own a major American franchise and control, but that could happen down the road.
02:46Who knows?
02:46David Rubenstein, Inside the Owner's Box.
02:49Folks, this is the sports book of the year.
02:51It is absolutely piercing.
02:53Let me give you one example.
02:55I had a great dad who was a man of spirituality.
02:59He was of limited financial means.
03:01He had a small dry goods business, but he was really a person who was a spiritual leader.
03:06He was head of all synagogues of Massachusetts for 12 years.
03:10He never watched TV.
03:12And then his kid, Robert Kraft, went on to win six Super Bowls.
03:16I mean, a guy like Kraft, I mean, what he did to pick up the, I think it was the
03:21Boston Patriots then.
03:22Give us a vignette into Robert Kraft, David, and what you learned from him.
03:28Well, Robert Kraft was born in Boston.
03:31He went to college at Columbia.
03:32He actually played football at Columbia University and later retained his love of football.
03:39But he built a business in the packaging business, and basically that was his life.
03:43And then an opportunity came along to buy a stadium that a football team was played in,
03:48and later he bought the team itself.
03:49And then he won six Super Bowls.
03:51He's now been to 11 Super Bowls, and I think in the recent era,
03:55nobody's been to as many Super Bowls, and nobody's won as many Super Bowls.
03:59And Bob Kraft loves the game of football, and now he also owns the Revolution,
04:03which is the men's soccer team in Boston.
04:06So he's given a great deal to the professional sports world,
04:09and obviously he had a very famous quarterback named Tom Brady,
04:13who he drafted in the sixth round, but later became, I guess, the greatest quarterback of all time.
04:18Page 57.
04:19Kevin, did David Rubenstein bring Pete Alonzo to the Orioles?
04:25Well, you know, I bought the Orioles in part because I wanted to help my hometown of Baltimore.
04:30Baltimore, when I was growing up, was a much bigger city, more vibrant.
04:33It's had some challenges, and I thought that I hadn't philanthropically done enough for Baltimore
04:38compared to other places, and I thought if I could buy the team and revive it a bit,
04:42it would help downtown Baltimore and help Baltimore generally.
04:45So far, I haven't been as successful in the field as I would like, but I've enjoyed the experience.
04:49It's just that I try to remind people that I'm just an owner,
04:53and when people come up to me for autographs or selfies, I try to remind them that I'm not a
04:57player,
04:58but sometimes when eight-year-old boys come up, what are you supposed to say?
05:01I'm not that significant.
05:02Don't get my autograph.
05:03So I signed the autograph, but I don't really think that they're going to sell on eBay
05:07for more than a penny or two.
05:08The Rubenstein different folks, if you gaze at the perfect Camden Yards, he's not up in the fancy box.
05:15Rubenstein is in row, not row one, row like two or three-ish near the dugout.
05:19All right.
05:20He's got a head on.
05:20He's going incognito.
05:22Good seats, though.
05:23David, as owner of the Baltimore Orioles, do you believe there will be a work stoppage in Major League Baseball
05:28next year?
05:29I don't think I know what will happen.
05:32I think the commissioner has convinced all owners that the best thing we can do
05:36is let the commissioner and his team try to negotiate a deal.
05:39So I think rather than get myself in trouble and get banned from baseball,
05:43I'm going to say we'll just see what the negotiators come up with.
05:46I just honestly don't know what will happen, but clearly I hope that we have a full season.
05:51David, I have to digress here just in the final questions that we have.
05:55We have an institution.
05:56I was watching this TV show, The Americans, from like 13 years ago of David Rubenstein's Washington, D.C.,
06:03and they're doing the beauty shots, and off in the distance is a beauty shot of a horizontal, gorgeous 60s
06:09architecture,
06:10the Kennedy Center.
06:11Yep.
06:11It's front and center now in debate.
06:13David, what is the best outcome for the Kennedy Center after President Trump?
06:22Well, I chaired the Kennedy Center board for 14 years, and I was on the board for 20 years,
06:27and I obviously care a lot about the Kennedy Center.
06:29I think I gave the Kennedy Center more than $100 million in philanthropic contributions,
06:33and I want the Kennedy Center to thrive.
06:35It was set up as a bipartisan, nonpartisan performing arts center as a living memorial to President Kennedy,
06:42and that's what it should be.
06:43And I'm very hopeful that at some point we can return it to a nonpartisan, bipartisan performing arts center
06:50that everybody wants to go to and perform at.
06:52Right.
06:53You and I adore Charlie Cook.
06:55Amy is doing such a beautiful job at the Cook Political Report.
06:59Charlie Cook wrote an essay yesterday for the Cook Political Report.
07:02It was absolutely scathing about how the Democratic Party can't get organized to take on this midterm
07:12or, frankly, after President Trump.
07:14What does the Democratic Party need to do to coalesce around the values of David Rubenstein
07:20and Robert Barnett of another time and place?
07:23Well, we'll see what happens in the elections.
07:25The midterm elections, traditionally, a president loses about 25 House seats
07:30and about two or three Senate seats.
07:32We don't know what will happen.
07:33We've only had one experience like this before,
07:37which was a president was in a second term that was non-consecutive,
07:41and that was Grover Cleveland in the late 1800s.
07:43And that was not a great outcome for his party.
07:46He lost 133 seats in the House, the greatest loss ever.
07:50Now, I don't know whether anything like that could happen again.
07:53I don't think so.
07:54But I suspect that it will be difficult for the Republicans.
