October 9, 2024 • 34 mins
To see the future of immersive mediat today, get to know the business of Cosm with its CEO, Jeb Terry. The NFL veteran has just begun an ambitious plan to build out dozens of state-of-the-art venues where fans can watch live sports and innovative entertainment on gigantic curved screens. He walks through the financial and technical aspects of Cosm and what sets it apart from Sphere, a similar venture making waves in Las Vegas.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to another episode of Strictly Business, the podcast in
which we speak with some of the brightest minds working
in the media business today. I'm Andrew Wallenstein with Variety.
Twenty years ago, Jeb Terry got an eye full of
the NFL up close when he made the roster of
teams like the forty nine Ers and Buccaneers as an
offensive guard. Today, he's playing a very different position, but
(00:30):
still getting an eyeful of the sports world as CEO
of Cosm, a fascinating new business enabling fans to see
games in specially designed venues with customized screens so massive
you can trick your brain into thinking you're watching court side.
We'll be back to talk about this business with Jeb
(00:51):
in just a moment, and we are back with Cosm
CEO Jeb Terry. Jeb, thanks for making the time to
talk to me.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Andrew, appreciate you having me on. Excited to share more
about COSM.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
So we got to start with just explaining the experience.
I had the honor of going down to your la facility.
I got to see it. Describing it though, I just
want to make sure let's talk about it like you
were telling your grandma. The what the cosm experience.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Is, Well, what we can all agree on is that
it's a must sy to believe. When you try to
describe it, you use words like immersive, experiential, hires, all
these you know, really compelling word choices, and you kind
of sounded a hyperbolic at times. But at the end
of the day, this whole thing is about a concept
(01:48):
that we call shared reality. It's leveraging all the amazing
immersive technology that's out there in market, some of the
stuff that we built ourselves, but leaning into the experience economy,
and it's this notion of wanting to be with a crowd,
having fun, celebrating the energy of the room, and it's
about being the best watch party.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
That's really what cousms about.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Technically speaking, though, let's talk about it from that perspective.
Explain in terms of the size of these screens. The
resolution wow us with the numbers.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, it's essentially a twenty six meter diameter LED display
that's twelve K resolution that wraps up and around you
and over your head where hundreds of fans can sit
within this dome environment and see eight K plus resolution
that our media team is producing to put you in
(02:41):
that best seat in the house. We're switching cameras, we're
following the action. We're really giving the fans that incredible
first person experience like they're actually at the event itself,
and we do it live. So this is something that's
really technologically advanced. That is a net new offering and
market and a new experience that we're seeing people really enjoy.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
And look, like I said, I was there in La
I could vouch for this. And the thing I want
to make clear to people because obviously you got to
see it to believe it. A podcast isn't the best
place to describe the experience. But you know, there's lots
of technologies like I'll think about Apple Vision Pro where
it's more like you could see where the product is going.
(03:26):
It's not quite there yet, your product it's there. I mean,
I'm sure you're going to innovate it and make it
even better in the coming months or years. But this
is a fully baked vision, wouldn't you say, Or am
I maybe selling it short and it's got a lot
more to go?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
No, this is a very well I'll say it's well baked.
There's always room for improvement, and the fact of the matter,
is by owning our own technology stack and everything around it,
we're always going to continue to improve. That's that's the
core of our whole company ethos. One of the things
we like to say is we are the venue of now,
not the venue of the future. The venue of the
(04:03):
future implies obsolescence. We always want to be now, whether
it's today or ten years from now. We want to
be the best of breed experience, showcasing the best technological
advancements possible, and that's why we built the company that way.
But we feel great about the fan feedback we've been
getting the experience. We're seeing seeing the fan reaction coming
(04:24):
in for the first time and then watching fans come back,
and we're starting to see people come back time and
time again for the same sport category or even other
sports or other entertainment offerings. And that's what's really gratifying
is when you can see that fan them light up
when they see the experience and they experience the food
and drinks and everything around it. That's core to it.
(04:44):
And one of the things Andrew I missed probably was
that the F and B offering is really part of
this whole entire shared reality experience. We want to make
sure you have great food, great drinks, comfortable seeding. It's
not a theater, and we give all those amenuties you
might expect at club or VIP sections of these arenas
and stadiums being built today.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
We should also make clear that the LA facility is
just one building you have in market. There is a second,
I believe in Dallas, and a third coming to Atlanta
and a big number projected for twenty thirty. Walk us
through that.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah, So our goal is to take COSM global. You know,
we've been working on this a while and we built
the whole back end so that we can scale this.
It's why we opened two essentially at the same time,
is to really define that multi point thesis. We've announced
Atlanta and we have big, big aspirations to take this
from now to open to over one hundred one day.
(05:41):
That's that's our goal. We really think that's achievable because
we look at all these major markets both in the
US and internationally and they can support that COSM location.
And we've been working on this real estate scale to
continue to widen those opportunities and grow. You know, I'd
love to one point get to where we're opening ten
(06:02):
a year. We're not there yet, but that's aspirationally where
we're going. As we get to this big scale and
each venue Andrew is a essentially a node in a network.
We can take the same feed and distribute it all around,
really increasing that overall audience or that single source and
addressing the demand in various markets.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Yeah, it's you know, going to be interesting to see
how you scale. And I'm curious about the financial side
of this. I think you guys recently got a two
hundred and fifty million dollar infusion that values the company
at a billion dollars. Sounds like a lot, but the
truth is these facilities probably cost a ton.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Yeah, we're really comfortable with what our facilities are costing
right now. We didn't go into this thinking anything's going
to be a loss leader, and we structured this to
ensure that we can monetize these venues properly and justify
the capex it costs to build these things. So as
we look at this scale, we raise the money for
pure growth capital. It is about deployment and scaling more
(07:03):
and more and more on a single site. These are
operationally profitable. This is why how we structure this business.
But it's about this long term scale and the viability
of the enterprise and the valuation that you mentioned. It's
really indicative of the enterprise that we've built. We're not
just a single venue builder. We have our COSM Media
and our Technologies orgs where we sell through our technology
(07:25):
and services to the broader ecosystem across a lot of
different industries. So we really have a good steady state
of monetization of where we're going and a number of
opportunities that we're going to be deploying our technology and
expertise around the world in addition to everything we're doing
in the venues.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
So think of the.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Venues as the best consumer expression of our brand and
all of our tech. But everything you see in there,
from the display to the production, to the app to
the back end XMS system is CAUSM and that's really
where that valuation is supported. In those scale opportunities as well.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Tell us a little bit about the origin story of COSM,
because I was interested to learn that you guys have
your roots in the planetarium business, which actually makes a
ton of sense. It's just I've never even thought about
that as a business.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Well, that's the thing when you sit back and think
about it, You're like, oh, I kind of get it.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
It makes sense.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
So the planetarium, it's the first immersive or experiential venue
ever created the goals to take into space. And you
probably remember one of the first times you went in,
right that that awe inspiring surprise and delight as a
kid when you went into a planetarium. And so when
we set out to bring the CAUSEM vision to life,
we looked at all these opportunities and how do we
make this happen? And my chairman and I my chairman
(08:41):
a guy named Steve. When we're ideating around how do
you make this thing happen, I'll say Steve when the
I not the y okay, I was like a second
to clarify. Yeah, So really thinking through this, and he
already known he'd always been fascinated with the planetariums and
and really had understood and had a lot of passion
for it. And so looking at it, it's like, wow,
(09:01):
this planetarium is underlying technology is pretty incredible, and so
we could leverage that tech to do more things, and
it turned out it made sense for us to acquire
that business. So today we are still the largest planetarium
company in the world. We power over seven hundred globally,
and so that software has been hardened over time, decades
(09:22):
and decades, and so it's not like we just came
up with something and slapped together and opened a venue, right,
it's that infrastructure that's been built, and so now we're
able to leverage a lot of that same core discipline
of putting data in cool dome surfaces and now bring
that to life within our venues. You know, the prevailing
game engines of the world today, like Unreal and Unity
(09:44):
we are Our engine is very similar to that, and
we're compatible with both engines, and so you can drag
and drop and bring content from all types there. We've
also acquired two other companies. One was Livelike VR. We
bought that company in twenty twenty as a carve out
of Live Like and they are a VR production company
for live sports. A great team, had great tech. We
(10:06):
had the opportunity to buy that business and bring it
in and we still service that industry. So we produce
immersive content. We worked with the Olympics and the World
Cup and a number of others. We work with a
number of headset providers today. And then we also bought
a company called C three sixty, which is really known
for the pylon camera on NFL Sundays. So if you
watch NFL, you know when the guy's diving over the
(10:27):
goal line and they cut to that camera. Yep, that
is us a majority of the time. And so having
this tech deployed and all this unique capture methodology, we're
able to bring that in in one house. We call
it Cosm, So that's the Cosmos meets the coliseum.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
It's funny you bring up the brand name because I
get it now, but I still think this new business
of yours needs its own brand name that is a
little more evocative of the experience my two cents. So
I don't know if that's something you're even thinking about.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Well, so it's interesting you say that. When we were
coming up with the name, you know, really, this this
combination of Cosm of Colisseum and the Cosmos, like the
science education vertical, is critical to who we are. It's
part of our foundational elements. It will always be important.
So we really wanted to pay respect to that industry
and our clients there. And of course the Colisseum side
Cosm was also a four letter domain we could own,
(11:24):
which is was did did you know? Is meaningful to
think about? But early days we were laughing. It's we
want to be like the Q tip of the experience economy.
Who would have known a Q tip is a cotton
swab on a stick, right, and who wouldn't know what
the useful? But I say a Q tip and you
know exactly what that is?
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Right?
Speaker 2 (11:43):
So hard to explain. So that's the beauty of trying
to define a category. You have to be comfortable being
misunderstood in the beginning, and then when you get the
aha moment, hopefully we can drive traction and all the
earned media will build what that brand is and what
cosm really means.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Well in terms of defining the category, you know, the
obvious comparison here is going to be the Las Vegas sphere,
which there's similarities, but there's also a lot of big differences,
and so I'm just curious, like, how do you are
you dealing with that in the marketplace right now where
(12:21):
people just assume that is what you are, How do
you see that?
Speaker 2 (12:26):
We really view this as a rising tide type of analysis, right,
The immersive form factor and the sphere is an amazing facility.
I've been there. What they've done is really technologically very
very difficult, and they've been able to make it incredible
and the content they have it's a great experience. And
at the macro level we agree it's we are both
(12:47):
building technology led human experiences that leverage amazing audio and
visual We approach it differently. You know what they've done
with music and experiential cinema and things like that that
has been really, really impressive. We really focus on the
live side of it, like the live virtually live content
in and all the production around that, and our form
(13:09):
factors are very different. We're looking at a much more small,
intimate form factor that we want to take multiple spots
around the world, and that's a core differentiation. And then
you know, we both believe in a leveled up experience.
We want great hospitality, all those things. But there are,
like you said, quite a lot of differences within the
(13:30):
business models and the form factors and everything we're doing.
And then one of the other things that we focus
on is really multi day part programming, where we view
each venue like a TV channel where live sports is
the hero, and then we fill in day parts around
that to make sure we have a vast programming slate
to have an always on type of mentality.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
And you guys, I think just recently signed a deal
with the NFL for some programming there. What is that about.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
So now we've been able to showcase NFL games and
shared re cosm and something we're really proud of being
able to do. We've started with Thursday Night football, which
is great. We've been able to showcase some of that
Sunday night football as well, and we're going to be
continuing to expand on that slate of offerings and look
forward to sharing more when the time is right. But
(14:16):
we've been really really you know, privileged to be able
to work with the NFL. Will never well, you know,
at the end of the day, we're never going to
be better than that stadium experience, right, That's one of
the things that we want everyone to know. There's nothing
like being in a live stadium arena, but for those
away games, for the times people can't get into the venue,
(14:37):
when they can't make it there, we're a fantastic offering
and that's what we're seeing come to life now and
being able to add NFL programming to our slate has
been fantastic and something we've been working on for a
while with them.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
We will hear more about the worlds of sports and
COSM coming together. In just a minute with more with
Jeb Terry, and we are back with Cosm CEO Jeb Terry.
We're just talking about the NFL plank of the sports
(15:13):
content that you guys do. I guess it helps that
you already had technology in these stadiums and so these
leagues were familiar with you. And the reason I say
it is because essentially we're talking about is you have
a set of rights deals with these leagues and that
(15:34):
is no small matter. I would imagine it could also
be very expensive. What is it like dealing with the leagues?
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Look, I'm a sports guy through and through, layering technology
and media throughout, and honestly, it's a privilege to be
able to do it just full stop. The opportunity to
work with some of these things and deliver that prize
content to fans in a new way. It really is
a privilege that we take very serious. The responsibility to
represent these brands matters most. A lot of the reason
(16:05):
we've had success is as being a known entity in
this ecosystem, being able to be a technology service provider,
to a lot of these leagues is important. Being able
to work within the broadcast construct and framework is important.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Myself.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
A lot of my colleagues were at Fox Sports and
other places, and so understanding how that all works and
ensuring we can fit in with our production and add
value back to the other stakeholders matters. So, yeah, we
are a technology provider, we are also a rights buyer,
and so that all centers around just a trusted relationship
(16:41):
and a partnership that we've been developing all the way
back to when I played and then having some of
the knowledge of the inner work is how this all
fits together, and you have to approach it in a
really humble, respectful way. You can't be a distracting science project, right.
You need to come in and know that the linear
proposition and the end stadium experience that is the hero,
(17:02):
that is the product, and how do we fit in
and extend that right, help create additional offerings around that
construct and approach it very humbly. We've done that, we've
been able to enjoying some success there, and now it's
our responsibility to execute and live up to our expectations
and their standards so that we can continue these relationships.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
And I just want to underline what you're saying for
those who might think that we're speaking maybe a little
too reverently about these kind of things. But I think
it's because the opportunity here really is huge if and
it is really a gigantic if you guys can carve
(17:48):
out what is sort of a new window of viewing
that is a sort of a midpoint between the home
remote experience and the in stadium and if you could
do that and you've got the rights deals, oh my god,
your business is going to be a rocket. And so
that's why we we we sort of speak in the
(18:10):
tones that we do about these deals.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
You're you're, you're, you're exactly you're exactly right, and that
is the if. And so look, we had to come through.
And the only reason we were confident about even attacking
the if right really going out this is because of
the early prototyping and experiences that we're able to see
right in the earliest days and we were spinning up
(18:33):
some proof of concepts and trying to unpack what what
is this and it is the oh my gosh experience
when you're sitting in the technology and you've got the
right feeds and you're able to do that, and it
is just a immediate gut reaction moment that I've seen
time and time and time again, and how did you
do that?
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Like? That is that is the question?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
And then it was you were doing this live, like,
oh my gosh, how are you doing this live? Usually
these are you know, in posts and there's only thirty
second highlights. And so we saw that we were core believers.
Early testers saw it. We saw those reactions, and that
gave us the confidence to put the capital to work
(19:15):
to build these things and also approach all of these
rights holders to go out and try to do this,
and it took a ton of work. As you know, Andrew,
this is not a easy endeavor. And now that we're here,
we're seeing seeing fan reactions, we're seeing it go viral
all the ear in media, and we're seeing that value
proposition come to life. And then again it's our job
(19:37):
now to speak about it reverently and execute now right,
it's this execution phase to continue to mitigate the risk
downside of the if you know, bolster the net new
category conversation, and do everything we can to continue to
scale this business and showcase the power of shared reality.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Now we should note also that our friends over at
the Sphere who have a very guess differ a different business,
but they just did a deal with UFC, So is
that a validation or competition or maybe both.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Look Hats off to all those guys for getting that done.
That was an incredible, incredible event. We were actually given
our relationship as well. We're able to live stream that
into our domes, so it was like Sphere in a
dome like dome sception if you want to call it that,
and it was. It was awesome because we're able to
showcase all that amazing media and graphics within our display
as well, and so we created a really cool experience
(20:36):
kind of a I don't know if you want to
call it a satellite type experience, be able to extend
what they were doing in Vegas into our other venues
through that UFC relationship. So love to think that this
was continue additive to all the fight fans and other locations.
They had a roaring success in Vegas and this extension
was I think another great proof point of how we
(20:59):
have a big similar thesis right with us in the sphere,
but bringing in the right partners can continue to expand
that and offer these amazing technology powered experiences to others.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Patents is that something you hold for what the technology is,
because I would imagine that's got to be pretty valuable
to the business.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Look, we have a robust IP portfolio, yeah, and we
also have quite a lot of trade secrets as well.
You know, the thing about a patent is you got
to publish it, and oftentimes we keep a lot of
that in house without publishing when we don't feel like
we need to. So we do have a portfolio of
IP protection in place, which is great. We also have
a lot of stuff working on that's still still very
(21:40):
skunk works and incredible that we probably won't pursue patents
on frankly, but yeah, technological expertise matters. And thinking back
about the acquisitions we made this company, Evanson Sutherland was
built all the way back in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
They were in the supercomputer race. At one time.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
They created sketch Pad, world's first graphical user interface. There
is an amazing history there of computer graphic excellence and
innovation that we're able to build on. I've in Sutherland
from the namesake. Evans and Sutherland also contributed to the
sort of dominicles. The first VR headset ever created in
(22:18):
nineteen sixty eight. So this, this heritage and history is
in our DNA, it's in our bones. And there's so
many lessons that we've been able to learn and retain. So,
for example, some of my team members now are tenured
over thirty years within our business. So there's a lot
of knowledge and know how that we really cherish and
(22:38):
continue to try to foster and innovate around to do
where we're going in the future.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Now, given all that expertise, I wonder about yours. You know,
what we know about you is your NFL career. You
mentioned some time at Fox Sports, But explain your road
to this business.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Well, my road to this business.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
You know, it's not an ear path clearly, but it's
filled with wins and losses and and everything along the way.
But you know, I played at the fortunate of playing
football the University of North Carolina. I'm a Rabbit tar Heel,
so go heels, I have to say it, And was
also able to attend their business school to get my
NBA after playing football.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
But I went and played football for a while.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
I got the chance to be really, really good ended
up being okay, So I got it was in essentially
five years, from seven to sorry, four to eight. Then
I went back to business school and did my full
time NBA and uh my summer associate internship.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
I was at Goldman Sachs. I thought I was going
to go down the banking route.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Learned a lot really really important for me to transition
from the league to a professional honestly and understanding that
executive presence instead of going that route, started our first startup.
At the time, it was called Gridiron Grunts. It was
the audio version of Twitter. You know Twitter had tweets,
We had grunts and yeah, we built it around professional athletes,
(24:02):
authenticated content, and we built a platform that professional athletes
could talk into their phone and fans can get at
real time, and we try to monetize that with ring
tones and all sorts of stuff that was going on
right in the tens.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
Call it that.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
We eventually brought video to life within our platform and
learned a lot. It was your definition of four guys
in a garage with a startup, didn't know how to
raise money, didn't know how to acquire a customer, didn't
know about app store optimation, optimization, none of that. But
we were great at building a really tight team. We
were great at finding something of value, which was as
(24:37):
authenticated content from professional athletes, and what we had to
learn was how do we find an outlet for that.
So what we did instead of building a standalone app
where fans were subscribing, which what we set out to do,
we ended up syndicating that content to news outlets and
broadcasters and getting the authenticated real time source. And this
was before you took cameras into the locker rooms, right,
(24:58):
it was before you had mobile video, and so then
we were able to do that. We were to create
a pipeline that took real time video from an athlete's
phone into broadcast and so we're working with all the
broadcasters to bring that to life, and it was eventually
called Straightcast Media. And so we went through a really
interesting phase of learning on our end as executives. We
(25:19):
were able to sell that company to Fox Sports. I
came with that deal to Fox and was drewing a
lot of the cross platform innovation. Sitting on the digital
team and straddling that linear digital fence. If you think
about how that has evolved, it was a great seat.
So I got to learn and work of how are
we doing any immersive presentation of the Super Bowl or
(25:41):
the World Cup? How are we doing digital? What are
the social highlight rights?
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Right?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
This is before you even knew that. So at the
time rights deals were this big when it got to
social and digital. Now it's all slicensed up and so
look that Fox Sports learning was so critical to what
we're doing now and understanding this ecosystem and how it
all fits together. Was able to do some of the
biggest invest events in the world with these guys of
how do you take that linear portfolio and extended elsewhere?
(26:08):
And so did a lot there. Ended up leaving Fox
Sports after a tenure there and started going back into
the sports media tech landscape again. I explored the web
three space a lot, almost built the first NFT project
for sports rights, which was a really cool learning. But
it's always this connection of sports media technology, right, how
(26:31):
do you how do you think through this construct and
bring something new to market that I think fans will
know and love because the through line is fan passion
Andrew right like there is there is fan passion for
all sorts, and fans like to self select and tell
you who they love and they like more of it,
and so trying to create these new offerings and and
(26:52):
and and you know that led me to build COSM.
Working with Steve Wynn who I mentioned before, and then
being able to build this business was really part of
that origin story and a lot of my lessons learned.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
You know, when you talk about the holy trinity of sports,
media and tech, we should point out COSM is clearly
primarily sports, but there's other nonsports kinds of entertainment, Like
what could we see that's not sports?
Speaker 2 (27:20):
That's exactly right, So you know, from an entertainment perspective,
we're looking at we're actually currently working with some real
trophy IP to bring that to life inside of our venues.
Thinking about calling it experiential cinema right, type of really
being world building right and coming in and looking at
it that way. We're not a first run cinema that
we're not in that business. We're not a first run theater,
(27:41):
but think about how do you bring classics to life
the world building elements. We also do immersive art, so
you think about the whole explosion of immersive van Go
and Team Lab and all of that stuff. Bringing that
type of thinking to our venue. We're seeing great successful
that really cool excuse me, new media art that comes
(28:01):
to life, leveraging all of our tech platform We're also
doing things like oh, from circ to solet that has
been a fantastic hit. And so think about we have
cameras underwater, we have cameras up in the trapees, really
cool site lines around that as well, and then also
layering in music and programming around that. So can I
bring Red Rocks live into La? Can I bring a No.
(28:21):
Two performance into our venues? Bringing that to life and
all that programming strategy around that. So that's how we
think about it, really multi genre across all these categories,
and the through line Andrews. All these categories have fans,
they have cohorts, they have people that love it and
self select and now our job is to showcase how
that comes to life with our venues.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
And I get leading with sports. That makes perfect sense
to me. But I think you can also make an
argument that you guys are sitting on the cusp of
not just sort of taking the Red Rocks and Cirque
de Soles of the world and presenting them in the
most interesting way possible. But you could get into original
(29:03):
content that is not just oh, here's a movie on
a giant screen, but really approaching the art form in
a whole new way, not unlike we have seen a
lot of VR try to do with some degree of success.
So where is your head at on that opportunity?
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Yeah, you're exactly right, And we've created an internal group
called COSM Studios that what we do is we green
light and finance these types of new media projects for
display in our venues. And the really cool through line
is we can actually take that same content and put
it on headsets as well. So this cross compatibility allows
us to reach more people when we want, and then
(29:44):
for certain titles, we also make that available to our
planetarium network. And so if you think about bringing this
new media production to life and some of this original programming,
that's what gets really really exciting is because you're I mean,
you're exactly right where we can work with creators of
all sorts. Some of these new media artists are just
doing fascinating work, and we provide the tech and the
(30:06):
platform and some of the financing for it to bring
these ideas to life. And we feel great about that
potential as we look at the windowing of our content,
the day parting of the venues, the seasonality of sport,
and how we fill it all in and there is
so much opportunity. I'll tell you the one thing I
think everyone can agree on is that in five to
(30:27):
ten years the world will be more digital, more immersive,
and will be closer to whatever the metaverse is going
to be. Right sure, you know our goal is to
be a thought leader and connector in that space, great
IP to great hardware, leveraging our experience platform, whether that
is live sport, whether that's other trophy IP, whether that's Originals,
and continuing to build on that ecosystem so that we
(30:50):
can always be a stakeholder in these evolving time that
we're in right now, which.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Is a fascinating place to be. And we'll have to
check back in with you five years and ten years
to see how it comes to play. But my last
question is, you guys are in market now. There's two
open facilities, so I know it's early days, but what
have you learned? What have you seen in their reception
(31:17):
that's perhaps some surprises along the way.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
We've learned that fans love the dome experience, they love
coming to cosm, sitting in the Dome and it is.
It is a hit for sure. We've also learned that
it works for essentially every sport. That's something that has
been fantastic to see, whether it's tennis or soccer, football, basketball,
(31:40):
we've seen that work really, really well. We've also learned
that it works for all this other new media and
things like circ and the core of the concept is
very sound and it works. We've also learned that we
can execute it at a scale. So case in point,
on Sunday alone, coming up, we have a Premier League
(32:00):
match kicking off at six am in LA, going into
two NFL windows that will be live, and so our
ability to program this with live content all the time. Right,
we've learned that we've built the company and the scale
to execute that. We've learned we can do two venues
at the same time, and hence we can do three
four five with all of our tech stack and our
(32:21):
production methodology. There's things where we can improve, to be sure, Andrew.
We can improve on how we present the seating inventory
with our app. We can improve how we build the
back of house for our service and support. Right, the
beauty is is that we're doing so much. Is that
we can see every angle and hopefully improve the next
time around. Right, we have our own ticketing app, we
(32:43):
have our own back end XMS system, and so now
we're able to start reaching let's call it normalization, and
then we get to this maximization side of this constant improvement,
and we're doing it across our entire stack. And you know, look,
I'm able to speak in this confident manner because what
we're seeing in market, and we're seeing how fans are responding,
(33:06):
and we're seeing this appetite and demand even exceed some
of our expectations.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
And so now our.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Job is that you need to take all that earned
media in the virality that we were all seeing and
continue to convert it and convert fans to cosm and
to ticket sales. And that's where we're starting to make
that part of a core competency to continue to do
that and raise awareness on the event level basis.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Well, it's going to be interesting to see how your
growth story plays out in the coming year. Jeb Terry,
thanks for coming on strictly business.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Andrew appreciate it. We love to come back when we
revisit this story and see where I was right and where.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
I was wrong.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Thanks for listening. Be sure to leave us a review
at Apple Podcasts or Amazon Music.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
We love to hear from listeners. Please go to Variety
dot com and sign up
Speaker 1 (33:57):
For the free weekly Strictly Business news letter, and don't
forget to tune in next week for another episode of
Strictly Business
Welcome to another episode of Strictly Business, the podcast in
which we speak with some of the brightest minds working
in the media business today. I'm Andrew Wallenstein with Variety.
Twenty years ago, Jeb Terry got an eye full of
the NFL up close when he made the roster of
teams like the forty nine Ers and Buccaneers as an
offensive guard. Today, he's playing a very different position, but
(00:30):
still getting an eyeful of the sports world as CEO
of Cosm, a fascinating new business enabling fans to see
games in specially designed venues with customized screens so massive
you can trick your brain into thinking you're watching court side.
We'll be back to talk about this business with Jeb
(00:51):
in just a moment, and we are back with Cosm
CEO Jeb Terry. Jeb, thanks for making the time to
talk to me.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Andrew, appreciate you having me on. Excited to share more
about COSM.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
So we got to start with just explaining the experience.
I had the honor of going down to your la facility.
I got to see it. Describing it though, I just
want to make sure let's talk about it like you
were telling your grandma. The what the cosm experience.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Is, Well, what we can all agree on is that
it's a must sy to believe. When you try to
describe it, you use words like immersive, experiential, hires, all
these you know, really compelling word choices, and you kind
of sounded a hyperbolic at times. But at the end
of the day, this whole thing is about a concept
(01:48):
that we call shared reality. It's leveraging all the amazing
immersive technology that's out there in market, some of the
stuff that we built ourselves, but leaning into the experience economy,
and it's this notion of wanting to be with a crowd,
having fun, celebrating the energy of the room, and it's
about being the best watch party.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
That's really what cousms about.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Technically speaking, though, let's talk about it from that perspective.
Explain in terms of the size of these screens. The
resolution wow us with the numbers.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, it's essentially a twenty six meter diameter LED display
that's twelve K resolution that wraps up and around you
and over your head where hundreds of fans can sit
within this dome environment and see eight K plus resolution
that our media team is producing to put you in
(02:41):
that best seat in the house. We're switching cameras, we're
following the action. We're really giving the fans that incredible
first person experience like they're actually at the event itself,
and we do it live. So this is something that's
really technologically advanced. That is a net new offering and
market and a new experience that we're seeing people really enjoy.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
And look, like I said, I was there in La
I could vouch for this. And the thing I want
to make clear to people because obviously you got to
see it to believe it. A podcast isn't the best
place to describe the experience. But you know, there's lots
of technologies like I'll think about Apple Vision Pro where
it's more like you could see where the product is going.
(03:26):
It's not quite there yet, your product it's there. I mean,
I'm sure you're going to innovate it and make it
even better in the coming months or years. But this
is a fully baked vision, wouldn't you say, Or am
I maybe selling it short and it's got a lot
more to go?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
No, this is a very well I'll say it's well baked.
There's always room for improvement, and the fact of the matter,
is by owning our own technology stack and everything around it,
we're always going to continue to improve. That's that's the
core of our whole company ethos. One of the things
we like to say is we are the venue of now,
not the venue of the future. The venue of the
(04:03):
future implies obsolescence. We always want to be now, whether
it's today or ten years from now. We want to
be the best of breed experience, showcasing the best technological
advancements possible, and that's why we built the company that way.
But we feel great about the fan feedback we've been
getting the experience. We're seeing seeing the fan reaction coming
(04:24):
in for the first time and then watching fans come back,
and we're starting to see people come back time and
time again for the same sport category or even other
sports or other entertainment offerings. And that's what's really gratifying
is when you can see that fan them light up
when they see the experience and they experience the food
and drinks and everything around it. That's core to it.
(04:44):
And one of the things Andrew I missed probably was
that the F and B offering is really part of
this whole entire shared reality experience. We want to make
sure you have great food, great drinks, comfortable seeding. It's
not a theater, and we give all those amenuties you
might expect at club or VIP sections of these arenas
and stadiums being built today.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
We should also make clear that the LA facility is
just one building you have in market. There is a second,
I believe in Dallas, and a third coming to Atlanta
and a big number projected for twenty thirty. Walk us
through that.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah, So our goal is to take COSM global. You know,
we've been working on this a while and we built
the whole back end so that we can scale this.
It's why we opened two essentially at the same time,
is to really define that multi point thesis. We've announced
Atlanta and we have big, big aspirations to take this
from now to open to over one hundred one day.
(05:41):
That's that's our goal. We really think that's achievable because
we look at all these major markets both in the
US and internationally and they can support that COSM location.
And we've been working on this real estate scale to
continue to widen those opportunities and grow. You know, I'd
love to one point get to where we're opening ten
(06:02):
a year. We're not there yet, but that's aspirationally where
we're going. As we get to this big scale and
each venue Andrew is a essentially a node in a network.
We can take the same feed and distribute it all around,
really increasing that overall audience or that single source and
addressing the demand in various markets.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Yeah, it's you know, going to be interesting to see
how you scale. And I'm curious about the financial side
of this. I think you guys recently got a two
hundred and fifty million dollar infusion that values the company
at a billion dollars. Sounds like a lot, but the
truth is these facilities probably cost a ton.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Yeah, we're really comfortable with what our facilities are costing
right now. We didn't go into this thinking anything's going
to be a loss leader, and we structured this to
ensure that we can monetize these venues properly and justify
the capex it costs to build these things. So as
we look at this scale, we raise the money for
pure growth capital. It is about deployment and scaling more
(07:03):
and more and more on a single site. These are
operationally profitable. This is why how we structure this business.
But it's about this long term scale and the viability
of the enterprise and the valuation that you mentioned. It's
really indicative of the enterprise that we've built. We're not
just a single venue builder. We have our COSM Media
and our Technologies orgs where we sell through our technology
(07:25):
and services to the broader ecosystem across a lot of
different industries. So we really have a good steady state
of monetization of where we're going and a number of
opportunities that we're going to be deploying our technology and
expertise around the world in addition to everything we're doing
in the venues.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
So think of the.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Venues as the best consumer expression of our brand and
all of our tech. But everything you see in there,
from the display to the production, to the app to
the back end XMS system is CAUSM and that's really
where that valuation is supported. In those scale opportunities as well.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Tell us a little bit about the origin story of COSM,
because I was interested to learn that you guys have
your roots in the planetarium business, which actually makes a
ton of sense. It's just I've never even thought about
that as a business.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Well, that's the thing when you sit back and think
about it, You're like, oh, I kind of get it.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
It makes sense.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
So the planetarium, it's the first immersive or experiential venue
ever created the goals to take into space. And you
probably remember one of the first times you went in,
right that that awe inspiring surprise and delight as a
kid when you went into a planetarium. And so when
we set out to bring the CAUSEM vision to life,
we looked at all these opportunities and how do we
make this happen? And my chairman and I my chairman
(08:41):
a guy named Steve. When we're ideating around how do
you make this thing happen, I'll say Steve when the
I not the y okay, I was like a second
to clarify. Yeah, So really thinking through this, and he
already known he'd always been fascinated with the planetariums and
and really had understood and had a lot of passion
for it. And so looking at it, it's like, wow,
(09:01):
this planetarium is underlying technology is pretty incredible, and so
we could leverage that tech to do more things, and
it turned out it made sense for us to acquire
that business. So today we are still the largest planetarium
company in the world. We power over seven hundred globally,
and so that software has been hardened over time, decades
(09:22):
and decades, and so it's not like we just came
up with something and slapped together and opened a venue, right,
it's that infrastructure that's been built, and so now we're
able to leverage a lot of that same core discipline
of putting data in cool dome surfaces and now bring
that to life within our venues. You know, the prevailing
game engines of the world today, like Unreal and Unity
(09:44):
we are Our engine is very similar to that, and
we're compatible with both engines, and so you can drag
and drop and bring content from all types there. We've
also acquired two other companies. One was Livelike VR. We
bought that company in twenty twenty as a carve out
of Live Like and they are a VR production company
for live sports. A great team, had great tech. We
(10:06):
had the opportunity to buy that business and bring it
in and we still service that industry. So we produce
immersive content. We worked with the Olympics and the World
Cup and a number of others. We work with a
number of headset providers today. And then we also bought
a company called C three sixty, which is really known
for the pylon camera on NFL Sundays. So if you
watch NFL, you know when the guy's diving over the
(10:27):
goal line and they cut to that camera. Yep, that
is us a majority of the time. And so having
this tech deployed and all this unique capture methodology, we're
able to bring that in in one house. We call
it Cosm, So that's the Cosmos meets the coliseum.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
It's funny you bring up the brand name because I
get it now, but I still think this new business
of yours needs its own brand name that is a
little more evocative of the experience my two cents. So
I don't know if that's something you're even thinking about.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Well, so it's interesting you say that. When we were
coming up with the name, you know, really, this this
combination of Cosm of Colisseum and the Cosmos, like the
science education vertical, is critical to who we are. It's
part of our foundational elements. It will always be important.
So we really wanted to pay respect to that industry
and our clients there. And of course the Colisseum side
Cosm was also a four letter domain we could own,
(11:24):
which is was did did you know? Is meaningful to
think about? But early days we were laughing. It's we
want to be like the Q tip of the experience economy.
Who would have known a Q tip is a cotton
swab on a stick, right, and who wouldn't know what
the useful? But I say a Q tip and you
know exactly what that is?
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Right?
Speaker 2 (11:43):
So hard to explain. So that's the beauty of trying
to define a category. You have to be comfortable being
misunderstood in the beginning, and then when you get the
aha moment, hopefully we can drive traction and all the
earned media will build what that brand is and what
cosm really means.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Well in terms of defining the category, you know, the
obvious comparison here is going to be the Las Vegas sphere,
which there's similarities, but there's also a lot of big differences,
and so I'm just curious, like, how do you are
you dealing with that in the marketplace right now where
(12:21):
people just assume that is what you are, How do
you see that?
Speaker 2 (12:26):
We really view this as a rising tide type of analysis, right,
The immersive form factor and the sphere is an amazing facility.
I've been there. What they've done is really technologically very
very difficult, and they've been able to make it incredible
and the content they have it's a great experience. And
at the macro level we agree it's we are both
(12:47):
building technology led human experiences that leverage amazing audio and
visual We approach it differently. You know what they've done
with music and experiential cinema and things like that that
has been really, really impressive. We really focus on the
live side of it, like the live virtually live content
in and all the production around that, and our form
(13:09):
factors are very different. We're looking at a much more small,
intimate form factor that we want to take multiple spots
around the world, and that's a core differentiation. And then
you know, we both believe in a leveled up experience.
We want great hospitality, all those things. But there are,
like you said, quite a lot of differences within the
(13:30):
business models and the form factors and everything we're doing.
And then one of the other things that we focus
on is really multi day part programming, where we view
each venue like a TV channel where live sports is
the hero, and then we fill in day parts around
that to make sure we have a vast programming slate
to have an always on type of mentality.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
And you guys, I think just recently signed a deal
with the NFL for some programming there. What is that about.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
So now we've been able to showcase NFL games and
shared re cosm and something we're really proud of being
able to do. We've started with Thursday Night football, which
is great. We've been able to showcase some of that
Sunday night football as well, and we're going to be
continuing to expand on that slate of offerings and look
forward to sharing more when the time is right. But
(14:16):
we've been really really you know, privileged to be able
to work with the NFL. Will never well, you know,
at the end of the day, we're never going to
be better than that stadium experience, right, That's one of
the things that we want everyone to know. There's nothing
like being in a live stadium arena, but for those
away games, for the times people can't get into the venue,
(14:37):
when they can't make it there, we're a fantastic offering
and that's what we're seeing come to life now and
being able to add NFL programming to our slate has
been fantastic and something we've been working on for a
while with them.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
We will hear more about the worlds of sports and
COSM coming together. In just a minute with more with
Jeb Terry, and we are back with Cosm CEO Jeb Terry.
We're just talking about the NFL plank of the sports
(15:13):
content that you guys do. I guess it helps that
you already had technology in these stadiums and so these
leagues were familiar with you. And the reason I say
it is because essentially we're talking about is you have
a set of rights deals with these leagues and that
(15:34):
is no small matter. I would imagine it could also
be very expensive. What is it like dealing with the leagues?
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Look, I'm a sports guy through and through, layering technology
and media throughout, and honestly, it's a privilege to be
able to do it just full stop. The opportunity to
work with some of these things and deliver that prize
content to fans in a new way. It really is
a privilege that we take very serious. The responsibility to
represent these brands matters most. A lot of the reason
(16:05):
we've had success is as being a known entity in
this ecosystem, being able to be a technology service provider,
to a lot of these leagues is important. Being able
to work within the broadcast construct and framework is important.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Myself.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
A lot of my colleagues were at Fox Sports and
other places, and so understanding how that all works and
ensuring we can fit in with our production and add
value back to the other stakeholders matters. So, yeah, we
are a technology provider, we are also a rights buyer,
and so that all centers around just a trusted relationship
(16:41):
and a partnership that we've been developing all the way
back to when I played and then having some of
the knowledge of the inner work is how this all
fits together, and you have to approach it in a
really humble, respectful way. You can't be a distracting science project, right.
You need to come in and know that the linear
proposition and the end stadium experience that is the hero,
(17:02):
that is the product, and how do we fit in
and extend that right, help create additional offerings around that
construct and approach it very humbly. We've done that, we've
been able to enjoying some success there, and now it's
our responsibility to execute and live up to our expectations
and their standards so that we can continue these relationships.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
And I just want to underline what you're saying for
those who might think that we're speaking maybe a little
too reverently about these kind of things. But I think
it's because the opportunity here really is huge if and
it is really a gigantic if you guys can carve
(17:48):
out what is sort of a new window of viewing
that is a sort of a midpoint between the home
remote experience and the in stadium and if you could
do that and you've got the rights deals, oh my god,
your business is going to be a rocket. And so
that's why we we we sort of speak in the
(18:10):
tones that we do about these deals.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
You're you're, you're, you're exactly you're exactly right, and that
is the if. And so look, we had to come through.
And the only reason we were confident about even attacking
the if right really going out this is because of
the early prototyping and experiences that we're able to see
right in the earliest days and we were spinning up
(18:33):
some proof of concepts and trying to unpack what what
is this and it is the oh my gosh experience
when you're sitting in the technology and you've got the
right feeds and you're able to do that, and it
is just a immediate gut reaction moment that I've seen
time and time and time again, and how did you
do that?
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Like? That is that is the question?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
And then it was you were doing this live, like,
oh my gosh, how are you doing this live? Usually
these are you know, in posts and there's only thirty
second highlights. And so we saw that we were core believers.
Early testers saw it. We saw those reactions, and that
gave us the confidence to put the capital to work
(19:15):
to build these things and also approach all of these
rights holders to go out and try to do this,
and it took a ton of work. As you know, Andrew,
this is not a easy endeavor. And now that we're here,
we're seeing seeing fan reactions, we're seeing it go viral
all the ear in media, and we're seeing that value
proposition come to life. And then again it's our job
(19:37):
now to speak about it reverently and execute now right,
it's this execution phase to continue to mitigate the risk
downside of the if you know, bolster the net new
category conversation, and do everything we can to continue to
scale this business and showcase the power of shared reality.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Now we should note also that our friends over at
the Sphere who have a very guess differ a different business,
but they just did a deal with UFC, So is
that a validation or competition or maybe both.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Look Hats off to all those guys for getting that done.
That was an incredible, incredible event. We were actually given
our relationship as well. We're able to live stream that
into our domes, so it was like Sphere in a
dome like dome sception if you want to call it that,
and it was. It was awesome because we're able to
showcase all that amazing media and graphics within our display
as well, and so we created a really cool experience
(20:36):
kind of a I don't know if you want to
call it a satellite type experience, be able to extend
what they were doing in Vegas into our other venues
through that UFC relationship. So love to think that this
was continue additive to all the fight fans and other locations.
They had a roaring success in Vegas and this extension
was I think another great proof point of how we
(20:59):
have a big similar thesis right with us in the sphere,
but bringing in the right partners can continue to expand
that and offer these amazing technology powered experiences to others.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Patents is that something you hold for what the technology is,
because I would imagine that's got to be pretty valuable
to the business.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Look, we have a robust IP portfolio, yeah, and we
also have quite a lot of trade secrets as well.
You know, the thing about a patent is you got
to publish it, and oftentimes we keep a lot of
that in house without publishing when we don't feel like
we need to. So we do have a portfolio of
IP protection in place, which is great. We also have
a lot of stuff working on that's still still very
(21:40):
skunk works and incredible that we probably won't pursue patents
on frankly, but yeah, technological expertise matters. And thinking back
about the acquisitions we made this company, Evanson Sutherland was
built all the way back in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
They were in the supercomputer race. At one time.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
They created sketch Pad, world's first graphical user interface. There
is an amazing history there of computer graphic excellence and
innovation that we're able to build on. I've in Sutherland
from the namesake. Evans and Sutherland also contributed to the
sort of dominicles. The first VR headset ever created in
(22:18):
nineteen sixty eight. So this, this heritage and history is
in our DNA, it's in our bones. And there's so
many lessons that we've been able to learn and retain. So,
for example, some of my team members now are tenured
over thirty years within our business. So there's a lot
of knowledge and know how that we really cherish and
(22:38):
continue to try to foster and innovate around to do
where we're going in the future.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Now, given all that expertise, I wonder about yours. You know,
what we know about you is your NFL career. You
mentioned some time at Fox Sports, But explain your road
to this business.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Well, my road to this business.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
You know, it's not an ear path clearly, but it's
filled with wins and losses and and everything along the way.
But you know, I played at the fortunate of playing
football the University of North Carolina. I'm a Rabbit tar Heel,
so go heels, I have to say it, And was
also able to attend their business school to get my
NBA after playing football.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
But I went and played football for a while.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
I got the chance to be really, really good ended
up being okay, So I got it was in essentially
five years, from seven to sorry, four to eight. Then
I went back to business school and did my full
time NBA and uh my summer associate internship.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
I was at Goldman Sachs. I thought I was going
to go down the banking route.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Learned a lot really really important for me to transition
from the league to a professional honestly and understanding that
executive presence instead of going that route, started our first startup.
At the time, it was called Gridiron Grunts. It was
the audio version of Twitter. You know Twitter had tweets,
We had grunts and yeah, we built it around professional athletes,
(24:02):
authenticated content, and we built a platform that professional athletes
could talk into their phone and fans can get at
real time, and we try to monetize that with ring
tones and all sorts of stuff that was going on
right in the tens.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
Call it that.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
We eventually brought video to life within our platform and
learned a lot. It was your definition of four guys
in a garage with a startup, didn't know how to
raise money, didn't know how to acquire a customer, didn't
know about app store optimation, optimization, none of that. But
we were great at building a really tight team. We
were great at finding something of value, which was as
(24:37):
authenticated content from professional athletes, and what we had to
learn was how do we find an outlet for that.
So what we did instead of building a standalone app
where fans were subscribing, which what we set out to do,
we ended up syndicating that content to news outlets and
broadcasters and getting the authenticated real time source. And this
was before you took cameras into the locker rooms, right,
(24:58):
it was before you had mobile video, and so then
we were able to do that. We were to create
a pipeline that took real time video from an athlete's
phone into broadcast and so we're working with all the
broadcasters to bring that to life, and it was eventually
called Straightcast Media. And so we went through a really
interesting phase of learning on our end as executives. We
(25:19):
were able to sell that company to Fox Sports. I
came with that deal to Fox and was drewing a
lot of the cross platform innovation. Sitting on the digital
team and straddling that linear digital fence. If you think
about how that has evolved, it was a great seat.
So I got to learn and work of how are
we doing any immersive presentation of the Super Bowl or
(25:41):
the World Cup? How are we doing digital? What are
the social highlight rights?
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Right?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
This is before you even knew that. So at the
time rights deals were this big when it got to
social and digital. Now it's all slicensed up and so
look that Fox Sports learning was so critical to what
we're doing now and understanding this ecosystem and how it
all fits together. Was able to do some of the
biggest invest events in the world with these guys of
how do you take that linear portfolio and extended elsewhere?
(26:08):
And so did a lot there. Ended up leaving Fox
Sports after a tenure there and started going back into
the sports media tech landscape again. I explored the web
three space a lot, almost built the first NFT project
for sports rights, which was a really cool learning. But
it's always this connection of sports media technology, right, how
(26:31):
do you how do you think through this construct and
bring something new to market that I think fans will
know and love because the through line is fan passion
Andrew right like there is there is fan passion for
all sorts, and fans like to self select and tell
you who they love and they like more of it,
and so trying to create these new offerings and and
(26:52):
and and you know that led me to build COSM.
Working with Steve Wynn who I mentioned before, and then
being able to build this business was really part of
that origin story and a lot of my lessons learned.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
You know, when you talk about the holy trinity of sports,
media and tech, we should point out COSM is clearly
primarily sports, but there's other nonsports kinds of entertainment, Like
what could we see that's not sports?
Speaker 2 (27:20):
That's exactly right, So you know, from an entertainment perspective,
we're looking at we're actually currently working with some real
trophy IP to bring that to life inside of our venues.
Thinking about calling it experiential cinema right, type of really
being world building right and coming in and looking at
it that way. We're not a first run cinema that
we're not in that business. We're not a first run theater,
(27:41):
but think about how do you bring classics to life
the world building elements. We also do immersive art, so
you think about the whole explosion of immersive van Go
and Team Lab and all of that stuff. Bringing that
type of thinking to our venue. We're seeing great successful
that really cool excuse me, new media art that comes
(28:01):
to life, leveraging all of our tech platform We're also
doing things like oh, from circ to solet that has
been a fantastic hit. And so think about we have
cameras underwater, we have cameras up in the trapees, really
cool site lines around that as well, and then also
layering in music and programming around that. So can I
bring Red Rocks live into La? Can I bring a No.
(28:21):
Two performance into our venues? Bringing that to life and
all that programming strategy around that. So that's how we
think about it, really multi genre across all these categories,
and the through line Andrews. All these categories have fans,
they have cohorts, they have people that love it and
self select and now our job is to showcase how
that comes to life with our venues.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
And I get leading with sports. That makes perfect sense
to me. But I think you can also make an
argument that you guys are sitting on the cusp of
not just sort of taking the Red Rocks and Cirque
de Soles of the world and presenting them in the
most interesting way possible. But you could get into original
(29:03):
content that is not just oh, here's a movie on
a giant screen, but really approaching the art form in
a whole new way, not unlike we have seen a
lot of VR try to do with some degree of success.
So where is your head at on that opportunity?
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Yeah, you're exactly right, And we've created an internal group
called COSM Studios that what we do is we green
light and finance these types of new media projects for
display in our venues. And the really cool through line
is we can actually take that same content and put
it on headsets as well. So this cross compatibility allows
us to reach more people when we want, and then
(29:44):
for certain titles, we also make that available to our
planetarium network. And so if you think about bringing this
new media production to life and some of this original programming,
that's what gets really really exciting is because you're I mean,
you're exactly right where we can work with creators of
all sorts. Some of these new media artists are just
doing fascinating work, and we provide the tech and the
(30:06):
platform and some of the financing for it to bring
these ideas to life. And we feel great about that
potential as we look at the windowing of our content,
the day parting of the venues, the seasonality of sport,
and how we fill it all in and there is
so much opportunity. I'll tell you the one thing I
think everyone can agree on is that in five to
(30:27):
ten years the world will be more digital, more immersive,
and will be closer to whatever the metaverse is going
to be. Right sure, you know our goal is to
be a thought leader and connector in that space, great
IP to great hardware, leveraging our experience platform, whether that
is live sport, whether that's other trophy IP, whether that's Originals,
and continuing to build on that ecosystem so that we
(30:50):
can always be a stakeholder in these evolving time that
we're in right now, which.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Is a fascinating place to be. And we'll have to
check back in with you five years and ten years
to see how it comes to play. But my last
question is, you guys are in market now. There's two
open facilities, so I know it's early days, but what
have you learned? What have you seen in their reception
(31:17):
that's perhaps some surprises along the way.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
We've learned that fans love the dome experience, they love
coming to cosm, sitting in the Dome and it is.
It is a hit for sure. We've also learned that
it works for essentially every sport. That's something that has
been fantastic to see, whether it's tennis or soccer, football, basketball,
(31:40):
we've seen that work really, really well. We've also learned
that it works for all this other new media and
things like circ and the core of the concept is
very sound and it works. We've also learned that we
can execute it at a scale. So case in point,
on Sunday alone, coming up, we have a Premier League
(32:00):
match kicking off at six am in LA, going into
two NFL windows that will be live, and so our
ability to program this with live content all the time. Right,
we've learned that we've built the company and the scale
to execute that. We've learned we can do two venues
at the same time, and hence we can do three
four five with all of our tech stack and our
(32:21):
production methodology. There's things where we can improve, to be sure, Andrew.
We can improve on how we present the seating inventory
with our app. We can improve how we build the
back of house for our service and support. Right, the
beauty is is that we're doing so much. Is that
we can see every angle and hopefully improve the next
time around. Right, we have our own ticketing app, we
(32:43):
have our own back end XMS system, and so now
we're able to start reaching let's call it normalization, and
then we get to this maximization side of this constant improvement,
and we're doing it across our entire stack. And you know, look,
I'm able to speak in this confident manner because what
we're seeing in market, and we're seeing how fans are responding,
(33:06):
and we're seeing this appetite and demand even exceed some
of our expectations.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
And so now our.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Job is that you need to take all that earned
media in the virality that we were all seeing and
continue to convert it and convert fans to cosm and
to ticket sales. And that's where we're starting to make
that part of a core competency to continue to do
that and raise awareness on the event level basis.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Well, it's going to be interesting to see how your
growth story plays out in the coming year. Jeb Terry,
thanks for coming on strictly business.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Andrew appreciate it. We love to come back when we
revisit this story and see where I was right and where.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
I was wrong.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Thanks for listening. Be sure to leave us a review
at Apple Podcasts or Amazon Music.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
We love to hear from listeners. Please go to Variety
dot com and sign up
Speaker 1 (33:57):
For the free weekly Strictly Business news letter, and don't
forget to tune in next week for another episode of
Strictly Business
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.