Youth Culture Meets Sports Commerce – Moksha Fitzgibbons, Complex NTWRK

This transcript has been transcribed by Riverside.fm, no edits (please excuse any errors)

MF (00:00.212)

Okay.

Sean Callanan (00:01.378)

Very happy to welcome Moksha Fitzgibbons. He is the president at Complex Network Moksha. Welcome to the podcast.

MF (00:09.236)

Thanks for having me. Nice to be here.

Sean Callanan (00:11.692)

Not a problem at all. I always start my podcast asking people how they got their start in the world of sports. For you, I'm gonna say, how'd you get the start in the world of sports and entertainment? Because it's a very wide field that you've been in. How'd you get your start in the business?

MF (00:25.852)

Yeah, well, you know, sort of coming out of college, I guess it's kind of a fun story. I was at a family wedding and I thought I wanted to go into banking and I had like a distant like second cousin who told me that that would be, you know, the most boring decision I could make in my life. And he sort of guided me to, you know, the entertainment and sports business, you know, being, you know, sort of a young guy. was

know, super passionate about, you the Knicks and college sports and, you know, growing up in and around New York, you know, a fan of the Yankees and all my uncles were like big Yankees fans and big Knicks fans. And, you know, I took a while, but I was, you know, it's kind of sounds super old school, but I was writing publishers of magazines, sort of begging for a

you know, assistant job answering phones and it took about a year to sort of get it in and I started at this publishing company called The Source and The Source Sports. was two titles. One was really focused on hip hop music, The Source, and then Source Sports was really very core sports, but it was really sort of looking at

the cultural impact of sports so beyond stats and graphs that you would see in SI and some of those traditional players the source sports had like, you know a hip-hop edge to it where you know, I was looking at like the cultural impact of people like Alan Iverson That went beyond just you know, amazing gameplay and then from there I met Mark and Seth who were

you know, the founders of Complex, were, I was like a young ad sales guy and they were my clients and they had this idea, they were like, we're gonna start the world's first digital magazine. And that evolved into Complex and really is interesting, like the conceit of Complex was really, it kind of like aimed for, you youth culture and at the time sort of millennials before there were millennials. But, you know, the point was like,

Sean Callanan (02:31.244)

Yeah.

MF (02:48.66)

young men are complex and they're just as interested in skateboarding and snowboarding as they are in traditional sports. And they're just interested in t-shirts and hoodies as they are suits and they like punk rock as much as they like hip hop. there was, back then the media was super vertical. It was like, if you wanted traditional sports, right. Yeah, was like

Sean Callanan (03:12.46)

Yeah, everyone had their niches, we would say. Everyone had to stay in their lane.

MF (03:18.556)

If you wanted skateboarding, was Thrasher and skateboarder. If you wanted football, it was SI. If you wanted men's fashion, it was GQ. If you wanted rock and roll, it was Rolling Stone. If you wanted hip hop, the source and sort of our insight was like, know, similar to that example of Allen Iverson is like the worlds are merging and the icons that we celebrate in sports and culture have a broader effect

on culture than just gameplay or just entertainment. And if you look a lot of what we did early on at Complex, it was like taking Tony Hawk and pairing him with the hip hop artist exhibit. So it was really showing like these two worlds colliding, but both had a significant impact on youth culture.

Sean Callanan (04:11.726)

And so, mean, you're effectively talking there about, you know, the genesis and the start of complex being in that, you know, that big media shift, you know, we're both dating ourselves remembering either writing for magazines and buying magazines and and print media. And it was sort of in those early 2000s where print was trying to figure out digital in the same way that the sports world was. What was it like, you know, going out there with a digital only offer and like not having the, I guess, the hangups of, of, of

MF (04:38.856)

Yeah.

Sean Callanan (04:40.728)

hang on, we've got to keep print going and not cannibalizing it, but really just going pure digital in that time.

MF (04:48.692)

Yeah, so it's interesting. So when we first launched the digital version of the magazine was actually on Sony mini discs, if you remember those. That didn't scale to say the least. We then made a physical print magazine and that was like as a concept, it was really successful. It was also, you know, was well embraced by consumers and really well embraced by the advertising community. But there was

Sean Callanan (04:58.264)

Yeah.

Yeah.

MF (05:17.918)

there's so much friction on the physical print in terms of getting the content to consumers. And in the early 2000s, we started to lean in and incubate around digital. And as it would happen, as we're like a couple years into it, very early stages, the financial crisis happened. The print business went to hell quickly.

But the digital business, both in terms of audience scale and engagement, but also advertiser receptivity, even during the crisis, it went up like 600%. And we were like, hold on, wait a minute. Like we're reaching way more people. We're really engaging with them and we're getting like actual signals back versus like, know, print like, okay, like maybe you get some letters to the editor. There's not a lot of feedback, but we're getting real time.

engagement on site through commenting and through you can see the articles being shared and all that kind of stuff. And then just that ease and lack of friction to get to consumers then unlocked sort of this label moment like, we can really scale the brand here and therefore be more attractive to the advertising side of the business and drive revenues. then,

there was all kinds of different formats in digital, right? So there was like the initial phase, then there was like the blog era, right? So was like, we had Complex as a main brand, but then we operated all these different blogs in, you know, things like Total Pro Sports or Nah Right, which was like a, you know, a hip hop blog. was, you know, to all these different verticals that were interesting to, you know, mainly males, sort of like 16 to 30.

Sean Callanan (06:48.664)

Yep.

MF (07:10.034)

And then, you know, the blog kind of era evolved and it became like an SEO era where you're fine tuning all of your content to drive engagement around, you know, sort of Google and Facebook referral. And that's where, you know, Complex, you know, sort of made its bones around like, you know, articles like, you know, the 50 greatest basketball players of all time or, you know, correct. I mean, we really…

Sean Callanan (07:16.824)

Yeah.

Sean Callanan (07:35.938)

Yeah, the era of the lesticle. Like we all remember that. Yeah.

MF (07:40.468)

Yeah, I I wouldn't say we were the first ones to do it, but we definitely were folks that perfected it. And it was, was, I mean, we had reams of people who were cranking out lists and rankings because the rankings create debate too, right? Like where does your favorite player fall on this list? But then we would even go more into like the cultural side. It would be like, you know, not to keep going to Allen Iverson, but it would be like,

Sean Callanan (07:58.69)

Yeah.

MF (08:08.625)

you know, his most iconic hairstyles, because that was like a thing he was known for. Or we would take it into the sneakers arena, like ranking the top Jordans of all time, or even the inverse, what are the ones that weren't the best of all time? And you do that across skate, you do it across running, you know, all the different verticals.

Sean Callanan (08:13.122)

Yeah.

Sean Callanan (08:30.222)

So, so in that era, like one you've going from, you know, you're sort of now drinking from the fire hose of getting so much feedback back, but then you're also trying to work with advertisers to say, you know, here's the different options. And again, the way you would have monetized it back then and as it evolved because like ad tech wasn't available, there wasn't like programmatic ads and just simple plugins and be diving in ad served. Was that also an evolving process to figure out how you could partner with your

advertisers, both, know, in when you're trying those different things, whether it be blogs or, you know, feature series and content partnerships, how did that evolve in those early years?

MF (09:08.392)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So one thing we've always sort of, I guess, our philosophy, both content wise and approach business wise is, you know, complex aims to be a very deep connection with the audience where certain other folks will go a mile wide and an inch deep. were the inverse of that. Right. So it's like very specific topics. It's sports, music, sneaker, style, pop culture.

kind of what complex was known for. And we try and go really deep with the relationship with the consumer there. The same was true with the marketers, right? So marketers could go anywhere and get an abundance of scale as they can today. But what they were missing in their media mix was depth of connection, authenticity, curation with the consumers. So our presentation to them was always like, hey,

let us help you, Bacardi, be authentic within basketball culture. And in that blog era, we actually launched a blog with Bacardi called Triangle Offense. And we pulled over the editor-in-chief of Slam Magazine to run it. And it was super successful for that era of time. And in some ways, what's really interesting is we were even doing it in print, right?

Cadillac or whoever would come to us and they'd be like, hey, we don't think our basic form, not boring, but our basic creative fits the lifestyle. And we would help them develop either booklets or inserts or multi-page sort of like custom ads. And we took that approach to the digital space. And that's even true today. mean, 70 % of what I'll call like advertising supportive business is all

custom created mainly video that we do in partnership with the brands like Nike or Jordan or Adidas. There's still some buying of banner ads and pre-roll when they create their hero spots. But most of it is they want to be in the tone and voice of Complex because that's going to drive the most relevancy because they just need scale. You just go to Meta and you

MF (11:35.444)

turn on the faucet and you got it.

Sean Callanan (11:39.276)

And is that where I think, know, for mine, that where Complex is sort of like a sports team in that you've got that depth of connection with your readers. So they are a tribe, they are a fan base, they are looking out for what's next from Complex. And so you can sort of be pitching Complex, you know, like the Knicks or like the Yankees in that, we've got Complex fans, this is what they expect, we respect them as our readers and what they expect from us. And so that's sort of

brings the advertiser to the table in some more of those collaborations.

MF (12:11.582)

Yeah. Yeah. And over the recent years, we've sort of evolved that approach from being what I would call traditional digital, which is web-based, mobile web, app-based, to being really video-centric and video-taking form in the long form and in content like this or sort of like more highly produced stuff.

that we would do on YouTube and other places to, you know, extremely fast, speedy, highly shareable content that's built for TikTok, YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, which is, you know, sort of like to flood the consumer who's looking for that rapid dopamine hit. And, you know, it's interesting. We've built

In-house we built a lot of like on-air personalities which are you know quite famous now people like Joe LaPruma who's the host of sneaker shopping the sneaker podcast on display, which is another show we do people like speedy Mormon who hosts our show 360 You know we used to have a food show called hot ones Which was one of the most popular you know sort of food based interview shows on the internet or probably still is

But shows like sneaker shopping, because of the connection of sneakers and sports, the most watched and most engaged episodes are always athletes. The top ranking one we've ever done in history is with Cristian Ronaldo. And just last week or two weeks ago, we had Shekwan Barclay on. So even though it's lifestyle,

The athletes are, consumers always want to see content with the icons that they admire most. And then they wanna see them in a space that they feel is relevant and attainable to them. And then as watching that content, they want to hear and see things that give them social ammunition within their peer group. So it's like, here's the icon of…

MF (14:33.94)

Christian, but then wait a minute, he's in Flight Club, a store that I can go to in New York City, and he's buying shoes that I can buy. Maybe I'll go in there and buy them and now I can be at the water cooler at work or the locker room and say, know, Christian and I got these sneakers. And then it sort of ties back to the whole fandom, but wraps it in a lifestyle wrapper.

Sean Callanan (14:39.587)

Yeah.

Sean Callanan (15:01.902)

But it definitely, I it does set that point of difference. You know, you're not ESPN, you're not going to be talking to Ronaldo about his fitness regime or how his hamstrings going. You are going to talk about what he likes, you know, what sneakers he likes, what music he listens to. And again, that relatability, that's one of the pieces that seems to unlock that athlete storytelling piece because the fans want to, you know, I want to know that I'm watching the same TV shows, the same movies and listen to the same music, whether it's Ronaldo or LeBron.

MF (15:32.508)

Right. Exactly. Like, you know, Josh Allen is a hero right now to this, this cohort, right? So, you know, last week, of course, we're going to do stuff on like the celebration of what a game, but we're not going to do breakdowns on like, Hey, here's how these three yards were picked up in a critical space. Right. And we're also going to celebrate, you know, the lifestyle and the

you know, business acumen, which is also super interesting to this consumer, know, consumers look up to a person like Josh Allen, like he's a, you know, fantastic player. And he just became partners in TheraBody where, you know, and consumers look at that like, well, like that's amazing. Like, you know, because consumers kind of want to be a triple threat, right? They want to have their main job, but then they want to have two other things going on. One being creative, one being an investment opportunity. And then

Sean Callanan (16:20.92)

Yeah.

MF (16:27.38)

you know, obviously he's married to Haley Seinfeld and like people look up to them. They want to know all of those kind of elements, not just sort of the core stats and in, in gameplay pieces. and that really wouldn't be our role. but it is filling very much a void for the consumer.

Sean Callanan (16:49.422)

Absolutely. So to go back to your sort of dive straight into the history of it, you rep complex, but then in 2017, you, you stepped away for some other opportunities. What were the what were those things that I guess drew your way to look at other things?

MF (17:05.875)

Yeah, so we launched Complex in 2002. I was like employee six or so, which is a round number. And then we sold the business in 2016 to a joint venture between Verizon Wireless and Hearst Publications. So kind of, I'd done it for a long time. My earn out was up in 2017 and

I was kind of looking for new challenges and I went to work on merging a number of assets, one of them being Dick Clark Productions, which at the time was the largest live music TV producer with shows like the Billboard Music Awards, American Music Awards, etc. MRC, which is a television movie production company best known for House of Cards.

A24 and billboard and Hollywood Reporter and did that for a few years and you know, it was it was definitely an interesting experience. It worked well for a while, but it was just it was an anyway, an interesting experience is good. then Aaron Levant, who I worked with at Complex specifically around Complex Con, which was a joint venture with his former company.

was starting an e-commerce company called Network, which was sort of really aimed at the same consumer as Complex. It was all around fandom. like tapping into core fan groups, whether it be sports, trading cards, sneakers, etc. And the idea was to take what is super popular in China with live stream shopping and launch that here in the US. And it did.

super well during COVID and sort of post-COVID as consumers had less in-house attention, the business needed sort of an inflection moment. in that timeframe, Verizon had gotten out of the media business. Obviously, they wound down Go90, they sold Yahoo and AOL, they sold the Huffington Post to BuzzFeed, and they had done a SPAC with

MF (19:32.724)

Buzzfeed and Complex that didn't go well and It took a while but to Aaron's credit. He was super persistent with Negotiating us to buy Complex back and we bought it back almost two years ago. We merged it with network so we brought in all of the e-commerce technology piece and made Complex a much more durable business, know Complex historically was

Sean Callanan (19:59.204)

Mm-hmm.

MF (20:00.884)

really reliant on advertising as like 90 % of the revenue. It did have some ticketing with the event side with ComplexCon, but really our thought was we have this really big audience. In the US, it's about 80 million consumers a month that are sort of all in that desirable demographic of 18 to 30. And we know they're out there buying these products and

Could we, in addition to entertaining and informing them, could we create a destination on Complex that they would come and buy the products that they have rabid fandom for? And it's interesting, the most successful things we've done to date have all been in the sports arena. You might have seen for the Expo game between the Cubs and the Dodgers in Japan,

Sergio who's on our our Merchandise team. had this idea. He's like hey, we have this relationship with Takashi Murakami who's a super famous Japanese artist Perhaps arguably the most famous artist in the world and then obviously Otani the biggest baseball player in the world and we were like Hey, could we do a collaboration between the two and then we quickly found out that's not the way it works and then we ended up, you know working on that process and we ended up doing a full collaboration between Murakami

Sean Callanan (21:22.572)

Yeah.

MF (21:29.544)

the Dodgers and the Cubs. And that collaboration sold on Complex, sold on Fanatics, sold on MLB and did tens of millions of dollars in revenue. Not to mention, just was like an amazing fan moment. We had pop-up shops in our store in LA. We did some in Tokyo as well, in Shibuya. And just like…

Consumers love, kind of back to what I saying before, consumers want not only the sort of like the game play of sport, but they want the culture of sport. They want that exclusive collaboration or it signifies a moment in time, or maybe they're the only one in their peer group that has it. And they love the idea of collaborations because the story of this iconic Japanese artist coming together with these iconic teams in a city that loves baseball so much is a…

Sean Callanan (21:58.745)

Yeah.

MF (22:25.52)

special moment for fans.

Sean Callanan (22:28.13)

And is that do you think, I mean, it's a bit of a retro moment. Like, you know, previously it was you would hold a magazine, you would collect the magazine and you'd have a pile of the magazines in your house to say, hey, this is is me as a fan. you know, and then we sort of went to that pure digital and social era. But now we're sort of seeing that pullback of what does, you know, in person look like what does you know, how do we get people meeting together and also the merch piece of hey, how do we how do we how do I signify that I was there or or that I'm part of this tribe? And that's where merch is really

MF (22:50.609)

Yeah, like p-

MF (22:55.336)

Yeah.

Sean Callanan (22:58.146)

really killing it.

MF (22:58.824)

Yeah, like, like people want stuff like this. This was the, you know, Travis Scott, Nike, Barcelona collaboration. And like this, it's like, you were either there and you got this or you waited on a digital line to get it, but it signifies not just your fandom for Barcelona, but your knowledge of culture that Nike and Travis Scott and Barcelona collaborated at this moment in time.

Sean Callanan (23:05.752)

Yep.

MF (23:28.186)

And you know, that gives, you know, obviously people wear apparel to express who they are. But these special sort of merchandise items also signify like that they were part of an experience. I mean, that's, I can remember, you know, being in my uncle's

Season tickets that he had in the 300 section at the garden where Larry Johnson hit that three during the playoffs and you know, won the game and like, you know, like those moments stick with people and merch is a a is a artifact of that moment.

Sean Callanan (24:11.342)

And so now you've got the business that can effectively service that with the merge piece, with the events complex con and being able to that activation piece. Then my only, my next question is, how do you, you know, how do you stay in front of those shifting youth interests? What's the next thing? Like you're partly the trend setter, it's a collection with a, you know, a hot artist and a hot athlete, and then you can sort of set the trend, but some of them get

decided whether on TikTok or Instagram, how do you make sure that complex stays in the pop culture for youth?

MF (24:51.664)

I are really good young people that are obsessed with sport and culture and research it. That's their lifestyle. And listen to them, allow them to bubble up ideas to you and not get stuck in a rut that like, hey, this worked last year because youth culture is changing so quickly and

young people. I don't know who said this, but it was accurate. Two things you never want to bet against in this world, technology and the youth. I believe that from a business perspective, you might not have to be the first one to do it, but you better be leaning into what's happening next with technology today, AI obviously.

And you better be leaning into what young people are doing and observing them and researching it and then having that inform your business strategy.

Sean Callanan (25:54.711)

And so, you know, I think we'll probably have a counter every time we say young people and youth, but how do you, how do you help and make sure, you know, your, your executive team or people in leadership understand the importance of listening to those young ideas, these trends like, cause you know, you know, might not get the trend. You might not, why is this a thing? This doesn't seem, you know, your, your gut might say, and it might be generational. How do you sort of break down that piece to go, I'm going to have trust in

you know, my staff that are living and breathing these trends, how do you make sure that's part of your culture?

MF (26:33.502)

Well, it's really an interesting balance because the young people are great at identifying the nuggets of the things that are bubbling up and that will drive consumer engagement. And then the more experienced folks are really great at helping them frame and hone how you turn that idea into something that is commercially viable. So like sometimes young people are like, this is great. We just got to go do this. And then the folks with more experience will be like, okay, that's great.

But how do we package this so it's repeatable, so it can become a franchise? How do we think, you know, what's the e-commerce opportunity here? What's the advertising opportunity? Like helping them think about those things. you know, we work in a bullpen environment, so ideas are flowing. know, there's four offices in the whole company and they kind of like sub out as conference rooms as well. there's, culturally, there's very good idea sharing. And then,

You know, we have two meetings a week with sort of all of those, those younger folks and their, and like sort of their key leadership where they're bringing forth ideas and then sort of the inverse is we're telling them like, okay, these are the business goals and realities that we're trying to work towards. And I'm gonna say it's, it's, it's, it's sort of dawned on me the other day. I was like, this is such a great relationship because they're bringing us value. then, you know,

kind of through necessity, we're helping them gain skills as they will grow into our roles in the future.

Sean Callanan (28:09.506)

And then to use a sports analogy, like, you you can swing for the fences, but I everything's going to be a home run. So you sort of, it's a bit of that training of you, you take your swings and, but you take the lessons and you look at the metrics and the analytics and, know, break it down on what went right, what went wrong. But then when something goes right, you're like, okay, you know, all gas, breaks. We're going, we're going ahead with this because it's working.

MF (28:32.936)

Yeah, I would say more times than not things that they take a while to build. you know, in content, in media, frequency is the name of the game. to build, know, let's just say we have this pilot, it's called tunnel vision where it's looking at the fashion as athletes walk through the tunnels. You have to do that.

after every meaningful game multiple times a week. So the consumer starts to see it and engage in it. And then you'll get the big viral moments. A show like Hot Ones that we created, now it's the most important show on the internet or one of them. And that took many years to build to that. They weren't booking Charlize Theron day one.

Sean Callanan (29:03.372)

Yeah.

Sean Callanan (29:20.696)

Yep.

Sean Callanan (29:29.613)

Yeah.

MF (29:30.206)

So there's a lot of, and then also we're really invested in building young people as the face of our brand and the host, the on-air host of our content. And to build them up, you have to have them, I call it on-air, but in content multiple times a day so that the consumers are seeing them, building a relationship with them, and then their stardom builds from there.

Sean Callanan (29:58.191)

Absolutely. You've got to get those reps, but that repetition piece is really important. Like we find that you've got to at least do something six times. So the fans start expecting it and even better, they're like, hang on, this is meant to come out on a Tuesday. Where is it? Like, and then you go, oh, we've got something here. And that testing alone. One thing I did want to, yeah, sorry.

MF (30:16.828)

Yeah, it's interesting. time I was at Core's late one time and they told me that no one ever sees their ad until the sixth time they've seen it.

So I was like, huh, that's pretty like in terms of recalls, like that's pretty interesting.

Sean Callanan (30:35.884)

Yeah. And then, and then, you know, as content producers, whether it's in, in, in media or sport, like people go, we tried that thing once. It didn't work. It's like, well, it only went up once, you know, the algorithm only gave it a little bit of a little bit of love. You don't know how many people saw it. You know, you've still got to market your content in different ways and different platforms for let people say it.

MF (30:51.774)

That's right. mean, right.

Yeah, mean Scott Galloway who claims to have three of the top, I think 100 podcasts or something like that, he always says it takes two years for a podcast to find its audience. mean, think about it, every week, sometimes multiple times a week until you find your audience, it's not for the faint of heart.

Sean Callanan (31:08.739)

Yeah.

Sean Callanan (31:18.274)

Yeah, like 400 episodes in I can I can attest to those type of things in finding your audience and

MF (31:22.706)

Yeah, I that was I thought it would be relatable. Yeah.

Sean Callanan (31:26.772)

And very grateful for people listening. One thing I did want to talk to you, especially now it's really something that is, you know, I guess the next transformation of the media landscape is, is AI and, and what it offers both from a, you know, productivity and workflow point of view, but then also the creativity side of things. How are you tackling, I guess, how are you tackling AI complex?

MF (31:51.688)

We're trying to embrace it as kind of aggressively, if that's the right word, or proactively as we can. we are, whether it's in first drafting, whether it's in reviewing contracts, we're using it in those kind of areas. We're using it in the development of presentations.

Sean Callanan (31:58.913)

Yep.

MF (32:17.586)

You have to do it tastefully because things can become a little too AIE, particularly in like image and copy. You can start to see that it wasn't sort of human made and I think you have to be conscious of that. We are experimenting with content formats. We launched a show called 24 Hours to Live where athletes and celebrities talk about like, if they only had 24 hours to live on the planet and…

Sean Callanan (32:22.83)

Mm-hmm.

MF (32:46.3)

the AI sort of like, basically we use AI to show all of those crazy things they would do. Hey, I'm gonna go skydiving. Hey, I'm gonna go to the beach in Miami and sort of like helps with the storytelling. We're really using it in any areas we can to help with productivity, to help with creativity. It's really, the biggest gain I've seen is allowing, or sorry.

and enabling people to move faster and in certain functions, it's enabled people to do the job of like two or three people if this was 2016, which I think is pretty amazing. And then, you know, I was just in a brainstorm before this and everybody, it was just so interesting. There's four people in the room, three of them, a question came up, they all went on chat TVT.

to get sort of inspiration for that whiteboard session. And so I see it a lot there too. And then, you know, we're doing some experience on like, you know, what used to be called like deep fakes and things like that, that are just more fun, you know, see if we can make something spoofy and viral. But I think it's such early days right now, it's about to my point before not sticking your head in the sand. And, you know, I think this…

Sean Callanan (34:09.902)

Yeah.

MF (34:13.552)

I saw an interview recently or a clip of an interview with Sam Altman and he was talking about like every 75 years, there's a major technology or business innovation, you know, sort of in the measurable history. And that basically halves the jobs from the previous industrial cycle, but people flourish in the new things.

When somebody struck me, he's like, I think it's going to be the same effect. It's just going to happen much faster with AI. And I think that that rang true to me. mean, I'm no sort of expert in that area, but it made a lot of sense. Like things are moving. Like no one was even talking about AI 18 months ago. Not really. And now it's so prevalent. Like I can just imagine in 16 months, 24 months, it's going to be even more prevalent. For many people, I think it will be disruptive, but

Sean Callanan (34:48.578)

Yeah.

Sean Callanan (35:00.718)

Mm.

MF (35:12.382)

for folks that embrace it, I think it will be super productive. I just think sort of going back to that, can't bet against technology or youth culture. Because one thing is true, I don't know if you have children, but if you have younger children, they're growing up on this. then, you know, sort of bringing it back to the content side, one thing that we're really contemplating is, you know, it used to be SEO search.

Sean Callanan (35:41.378)

Yeah.

MF (35:41.394)

you know, engine optimization. Now it's GEO and it's really interesting. You need to be seen as such an expert as the definitive expert in your subject matter to the LLMs. So then they're referring you as they're citing you rather as, the source. And if you, if us as a, as a media company, if we're able to build up that presence,

and establish that credibility in the LLMs around the areas that we're expert in, that's going be very valuable for marketers that want to be associated around that subject matter.

Sean Callanan (36:24.35)

Absolutely. I mean, we've been lucky enough to go through that, you know, the origin of the web and digital. And that was obviously a really big shift, you know, across media, but then across the world of business. But yeah, that point around what, you know, referral traffic and things like that from, from LLMs will be, you know, really critical. Like we saw how much media was, you know, getting traffic from Metta at the time, you know, Metta was the place that was getting all the traffic. And now that's again,

MF (36:52.744)

Yeah.

Sean Callanan (36:53.698)

That's now shifting people to, well, if meta turns off the tap, we're, you know, we're in a really bad spot, but now, you know, the same sort of, there's that real estate now you're going to fight for in the, in the LAOM space. And yeah, I, yeah.

MF (37:05.0)

Yeah, I'm not sure that it's gonna be referral. I think it's going to be that.

Coca-Cola is going to want to be associated with sneaker culture and they are going to want to, when you search about sneaker culture in the LLMs and Complex is referenced as like the authority, they're going to come to Complex and say, help us build credibility in that area so we can be…

Sean Callanan (37:32.078)

It's like a brand equity play more so than like a web referral play.

MF (37:37.172)

But it's the same logic you're surfacing them around content they want to be a passion point a consumer interest that they want to be associated with

Sean Callanan (37:40.045)

Yeah.

Sean Callanan (37:47.758)

Absolutely.

MF (37:49.032)

So it'll be tricky, but you know, that's what it's looking like.

Sean Callanan (37:54.209)

It will, but it also comes down to like how many people are talking about you or searching for you or finding you and being the resource. And that's sort of part of now your business being the content piece, know, complex con or collaboration with ESPN to sort of keep complex in the zeitgeist of pop culture. That's sort of what you're going to keep punching away at.

MF (38:20.53)

Yeah, I think, you know, our goal is to be really the most relevant brand in youth culture at the intersection of music, sport, style, and, you know, sort of fashion sneakers, if that's, you know, sort of a genre, and have a point of view, both from a sort of a physical product and content product perspective.

that is unique and discerning and is, you know, we talk and cover and sell things that are super mass market, but we're doing it in a way that's highly curated so the customer can feel like they're in the know or they can feel cool, for lack of a better word, buying it. And then we're also really obsessed on discovering what's next and putting, whether it's athletes, musicians, brands,

on a springboard to help them propel them to the next phase of their career. Because there's such a thirst and an appetite among young people to discover and know what's next because that gives them the social cache within their peer group.

Sean Callanan (39:41.217)

One of the themes that is in a lot of the conversations I've had with people in the sports world is that they are chasing that youth market, whether it be that 18 to 24, which you'll be rich in, or even younger to say, how do we get them to watch baseball, to watch a whole game of NBA, to tune into an NFL game? Their tastes have definitely changed. They're not the fans that potentially we were in our early 20s. What's your advice to sports?

know, leagues and teams that are trying to reach that younger market and engage them with their sport.

MF (40:16.808)

Well, I think the ship has sailed on some of that, right? Like the idea that people are going to tune in for two, three hours to linear television is just, that might be no offense to my friends in linear television, but that might be a diminishing return. I think brands and leagues need to behave social first, which right now is, you know,

a feed, a constant feed of content that is, you know, lionizing and celebrating their icons. I think the WNBA has done an amazing job of this lately, probably, you know, maybe the best. You you look at people like Angel Reese, Caitlin Clark, know, Page Becker, like these people, like in some ways they're bigger stars than the men.

And it's not through TV ratings, it's through social and it's through fandom and it's through merch and it's through collaborations with Nike. So I think the leagues, you know, obviously it's challenging because their business model is very much rooted in linear and streaming and cable. But the more they can do to build up their stars

Sean Callanan (41:16.429)

Yeah.

MF (41:45.492)

as icons of culture as the WNBA has. I it's obviously small ratings, but I believe that the popularity of these women is why you're seeing, you know, the best ever TV ratings for the WNBA. And I think, you know, some of the fracturing of the NBA on so many different, you know, I don't know, I'm not gonna call it channels, but, you know, different platforms.

that, you know, that can take a toll and then also like, you know, outside of LeBron, they, you know, there hasn't been the greatest build of sort of like iconic breaking through culture players, know, Steph, obviously, KD, but like, it feels like it could use some work. Obviously, NFL has

something that no one else has with the aggressiveness of the sport, that gladiator aspect, people love that. They also have far less games to the point before where I think it becomes, it's a spectacular versus a baseball or an NBA. There's so many games, so it's a more challenging.

sort of a thing to tackle. you know, look, the NBA finals last year, they did phenomenal. I mean, it's trying to figure out how do you, how do you get earlier season, mid season? How do you drive it then?

Sean Callanan (43:29.1)

Yeah, it better and it is that balance piece like the athlete led pieces working, you know, and helmet off in the NFL and, and bringing more of the players, players to the floor. But they're also playing that dance of well, the athletes are doing their own thing on their own channels. And they don't have the control over the players that they once that they once did. And so the WNBA is capitalizing on it on what the what the women are doing. But yeah, it is an interesting one to see.

I guess how the media keeps changing and where the audiences keep shifting.

MF (44:06.184)

Yeah, think also the, you know, I'm obviously not in that business, but I observe it. But I think it's probably pretty likely you see what happened last week or the week before with the Brazil, the Brazil NFL match highest ever YouTube live stream. I think was over 10 million people. That's probably a way to engage young people because

YouTube is their most popular platform. And it feels like, NBC, CBS, that's just not where young people are. But YouTube and Twitch and Amazon Prime are probably more relatable and approachable to young people because it's in the palm of their hand.

Sean Callanan (44:58.382)

Exactly. you know, the amount of people that would have been watching the game, but with I show speed, you know, coca within streaming it, you know, is can't be underestimated, like they're people that would just never watch an NFL game. So it is a way, a way through. And I think that's where, you know, things will open up.

MF (45:16.436)

And that's what, you know, my three daughters and youngest one is 13. She doesn't watch YouTube. She doesn't have a phone, but she doesn't watch it on the phone. She watches it on the TV in the living room. And it's just like she doesn't turn on. We don't have cable TV anymore, but like it's not the behavior. It's YouTube, it's Netflix, it's Amazon Prime. That's where they're going.

Sean Callanan (45:42.71)

Yeah, you can hand her a remote control and she won't know what it is. She'll think it's some weird phone from from Star Trek or something. She won't know. There's no such thing as a channel clicker. It's like I'm just putting it on YouTube.

MF (45:50.26)

in the next

Well, yeah, right. We have the Roku TV, so it takes a remote still. But you're right, you're not punching in numbers, you're just clicking through a couple apps.

Sean Callanan (46:03.724)

Yeah. Moksha really appreciate you coming on the podcast. I wanted to finish with the sports gate closing five. Do you remember the first sports event you ever attended?

MF (46:15.654)

Yes, I went to kind of a weird one. think the first ever like professional sports. Yeah.

Sean Callanan (46:22.274)

Whichever you want, no one can Google it unless they can.

MF (46:23.898)

okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, probably the first ever sports event was like T-ball or Little League or something like that. I think the first ever professional sports game I went to, weird enough, went to a Hartford-Waylor's hockey game. don't… I feel like they played Edmonton or something like that. But anyway, was… I don't know if you've ever been to that Hartford arena. It is tiny.

Sean Callanan (46:53.4)

Yep.

MF (46:54.452)

You know, it's like, you know, a third of the size of the garden or something like that. then, yeah, so think that was the very first one. And then, at least that I can remember. then, you know, like I was mentioning before, like all my aunts and uncles are from New York City. like big, big Knicks and, you know, Yankees fans. So I used to go to a lot of, particularly with my uncle, I'd go to a ton of Knicks games.

Sean Callanan (47:22.83)

And so you would have been a lot of sports games. You have a favorite food memory or a go-to food at a sports event.

MF (47:23.08)

and those were fun.

MF (47:32.308)

I have to say, you know, also another weird one. One time I was in Minnesota at a game and they have something called, when they had the dome there, I the dome collapsed during a storm or something, they used to have something called dome dogs. And I was like, what the heck are these things? But they're of like fat hot dogs with like loaded up with the works. don't know, maybe it wasn't the best food in the world, but it was like just so interesting and.

Sean Callanan (47:43.628)

Yep. Yep.

MF (48:01.076)

Like I don't know Minnesota coming from New York is like landing on the moon. It's like a different culture. It's like

Sean Callanan (48:07.214)

It is a little bit different to New York, absolutely. Now running a business complex, there's obviously a lot of things happening and a lot of different things. So what's first app you open in the morning?

MF (48:10.558)

Yeah, don't you know?

MF (48:23.134)

Wall Street Journal, as boring as that sounds. My very first boss out of college told me, you know, this is dating back, but he said, read the Wall Street Journal cover to cover every day and read the business section of the New York Times every day. And he said, any meeting you ever go into, you'll have something to talk about with that person that's of substance. I've, although it's a digital age, I have kept that behavior.

Sean Callanan (48:50.99)

Terrific, terrific advice. Is there someone that the podcast listeners should follow? It might be someone you've worked with or someone you follow on social media or an author.

MF (49:03.604)

Interesting. I would say, know, selfishly follow any of the complex handles, complex sports, complex pop culture, complex. Those would be good ones. then, yeah, I think those are the ones I'll, you know, they're the safest.

Sean Callanan (49:23.682)

That's not a problem at all. Last one, I always ask people what their social media platform is their MVP. And you can answer it personally and then put your complex hat on and say, what's the platform that's killing it for you guys?

MF (49:41.278)

For me personally, I think just also based on like the age that I'm at, I would say like Instagram is kinda is sort of probably the MVP. But for us as a business, I believe YouTube is still like the most meaningful because of its depth and reach with youth and also the time and engagement.

Instagram has grown a lot and we've grown our presence there a lot, particularly with their video products. It's gotten a lot stronger. And then every channel or platform is different. We're still super leaned into Snapchat, but that's onboarding the youngest end of our audience. Facebook and Twitter are the older end. Snapchat is pretty equivalent to Instagram at this point in terms of the age.

Sean Callanan (50:24.227)

Yeah.

MF (50:36.062)

But yeah, they all have different roles and you have to lean into them and you have to understand the dynamics of the consumer experience because what someone's going to YouTube for is not what they're going to TikTok for and it's not what they're going to Instagram for and certainly not what they're going to Snapchat for, which is mostly messaging. So you have to understand all those from a business perspective and just where I am in a life stage. All friends and family are pretty dialed in on Instagram. that's like,

It's more about keeping up with the news and keeping up with what people are doing.

Sean Callanan (51:10.126)

Absolutely. Well, Mark, I really appreciate you taking the time. Yeah, and all the best for all things complex. We'll put links in the in the show notes. I always ask listeners to reach out and say thank you. Is there a what's the best platform for people to do that to reach out to you?

MF (51:26.388)

Like LinkedIn is great.

Sean Callanan (51:29.442)

Well, thank you very much for coming, coming on the podcast and all the best for future endeavors.