ATP: Rich Neher says City Slams is coming to Atlanta

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Welcome to the Atlanta Tennis Podcast.

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Every episode is titled, "It starts with tennis and goes from there."

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We talk with coaches, club managers, industry business professionals, technology experts,

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and anyone else we find interesting.

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We want to have a conversation as long as it starts with tennis.

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Hey, hey, this is Sean with the Atlanta Tennis Podcast.

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And today's clip is from a conversation we had with Rich Nayer, who is a writer, author,

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and owner of tennis media group in publisher of tennis club business.

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He's also founder and president of Congo Sports.

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We talked about his new concept, City Slams.

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Let us know what you think.

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Start with, with Congo Sports, which is a couple of years in now.

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So catch yourself on wherever everything is.

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Yeah.

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Okay, road my vision document for Congo Sports, you know, that says in our unpoppeded mission

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statement that we'll be 10 times better than the USDA this one.

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The City Slams as the flagship program was already in there.

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This was in August of 2021.

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At the time wasn't right, I needed to do things first and needed to get my feet wet in creating

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programs and stuff.

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And the time is right now.

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Okay.

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And so, Congo Sports is kind of a catch all.

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Is it?

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Congo Sports is what exactly?

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What is Congo Sports and how does City Slams, how is it a product of Congress Sports?

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Tell us, tell us how works.

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Okay.

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So, Congo Sports is a product of my frustration with the USDA of not being able to create an organization

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where people say, yes, I want to be a member of that organization because it's fun.

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It's cool.

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It's tennis.

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So, I talk to people at the USDA about this, especially Mike Dauzi, the former CEO.

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And it's not in the DNA.

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So, I found it's not in the DNA.

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Although they're using this word now a little bit more to show the know what it is.

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But I decided to do it myself.

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But the premise of Congo Sports, actually, the overarching premise is to make tennis more affordable.

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For everyone.

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And the way we elected to do this is by shifting the entire model, the entire economic model

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from the player as a player to the sponsor as a player.

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Example, when you sign up for a tournament at Congo Sports and let's say the registration

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fee is 80 bucks.

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You'll find a sponsor, a local store, a local restaurant, a local something that will pay that 80 bucks

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for you or if they don't want to, they can give you a gift certificate to their store,

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worth maybe 120 bucks, something like that.

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That's one example.

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The other example is if you want to become a member in Congo Sports, which is still only $50

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a year, we will head pin racket sports.

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They'll actually pay, but give that person a gift certificate for $50 for their product.

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So these are the examples.

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And of course, city slams as a program, were players play for their city, which currently

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has a team, currently has eight players, which in a team fee or $400, we will find a sponsor

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to pay those $400 for the team.

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If we can't, we will let them play for free.

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That's our thing.

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And speaking to it.

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Bobby, how do we get signed up with?

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I mean, becoming to Georgia, don't you worry about it.

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That's obviously the next question.

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Two years, but we will be there.

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That's Bobby's next question is how do we get it here?

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How does that work?

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And when are you, do you take over California first and then you got to get through Arizona

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and whatever's in between?

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Yeah, I can't do certain things too fast.

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So the proof of concept for city slams is 2023.

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So at the moment, I'm putting teams together.

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We start playing actually on the 25th of March, the first group of teams.

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And we are creating the Southern California city slams champion.

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And while we are playing in Southern California, I am going to go up to Northern California

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to the same beer.

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So towards the second half of 2023, we will have a North and California city slams champion.

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And in November, the leader and not will find those two champions play off against each other

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for the California state championship.

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While this is all going on at the end of the year, I'm going to other states, Arizona,

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and I'm going to change in Oregon and so forth, Nevada, and create the city slams championships there.

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And you're far away from us, so maybe in two years, we will get to Georgia.

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But there is no reason why when the concept is proven and when we know how things work

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and why they work and how to improve them, there is no reason why we could start in areas

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like Georgia or Florida where we have a lot of people interested already and start playing there earlier.

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Bobby, you have thoughts?

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Well, first, what is the format of the teams play?

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You said, "A players, how does it break down as far as play against each other?"

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It's to women and to men, sorry, for women and for men, they are playing two men's

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doubles to women's doubles and two mixed doubles.

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Okay, so not at work, is it a full match or a team that is shorter?

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How do you get it done?

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It is full matches is a concept that is not what we want to do.

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We don't do things the way it's being done in the industry.

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Everything we do is oftentimes the opposite of it's being done.

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So we have short matches, eight game sets and an entire group of four teams can play the entire

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round Robin in three hours.

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Everybody comes to one particular place to play all the teams.

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They come to one spot and play.

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If there's more than one group, we'll have, after that we'll have quarterfinals or semi-finals

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and then finals.

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The time commitment is minimum, minimum because we only play once a month.

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So how many matches lead up to the championship playoffs?

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What is the season?

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Depends on how many teams are in there.

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Got you.

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It can be two or three or four matches.

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So how do you, I mean, the fascinating part to me is how do you approach or what is the incentive

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for the business entity to sponsor somebody to complain your league?

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Well, the incentive is we provide eyeballs through city slams.

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Eyeballs and we promote the business.

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We'll give them exposure.

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We let them if they want that.

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We let them do some brand activation on court if they want that.

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If it's possible for them.

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And there'll be featured in all our press releases everywhere.

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So we'll give them local exposure.

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That's important.

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It's going to be local sponsors and they get local exposure.

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Like the first sponsor we had is a local real estate company here.

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I like that model with keeping it close to home.

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Yes.

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So at the same time, of course, we're looking for title sponsors.

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In the future for presenting sponsors for all of their sponsors, like companies that can

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do swag bags.

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Tennis wayhouse.

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Where are you?

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I've asked a similar question recently.

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Yeah, we've got that conversation.

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Yeah, right.

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So I'm picturing like I get my team together and Bobbi and I are on the Atlanta team.

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And we go to the local, I'm going to make something out.

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We go to the local Mexican restaurant.

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So I've got Paco's tacos.

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And I'm wearing my shirt at the event.

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And that's why they spend the $400 that kind of thing.

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That's kind of part of the idea of I'm wearing my Paco's tacos shirt while we play.

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If you want to want that to be part of it, of course.

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Yeah, maybe we have to up the $400 to include some shirts in there.

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But yeah, we tell the local restaurant, we'll do your promotion for a while.

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Let's see if you can get to some customers.

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Gotcha.

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In that case, how are you doing the math?

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What's your CPM?

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Do you have a math that says, okay, we're going to do this event.

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Here's the tournament.

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It's going to be this tennis facility.

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And we're going to get you $3,000 people coming through.

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And therefore, that is the $400 kind of a strange question to ask.

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If you don't want to talk numbers, I get it.

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But is the $400 kind of an arbitrary number right now?

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Are you guys have costs and how that works?

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Right now, it's an arbitrary number.

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Okay.

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But I can tell you one thing.

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When the proof of concept is over.

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And the world will see how well this works.

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And how unique this entire program is.

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I can guarantee you one thing.

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The cities will stand in line to become to be part of it

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and to sponsor their teams.

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I don't think in the future, especially if a team is successful

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and goes on becomes a state champion, becomes maybe a regional champion.

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And it's on their way to become a national champion.

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The cities will stand in line to sponsor their team to pay for everything.

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But travel for food, hotel, everything for that team,

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because it's going to be a promotion for that city too.

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So in that case, I'm going to log to wearing my Poco's tacos shirt.

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I'm wearing my city of Atlanta shirt.

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No, you win.

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You tacos shirt and you have a stick on that shirt.

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It's a city of Atlanta.

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And then my not tennis warehouse on the side.

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Because we have a back from the house on the side.

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Maybe yes.

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But forget the entire Congo sports city slams program is supposed to look

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sooner or later.

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We'll look like a pro to where I call it the tour for the little guy.

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I am approaching the WTA and the ATP to partner with us.

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So far, they haven't been very receptive to that idea.

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But I told Steve Simon, we will have more fans and he does in a few years.

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I like that confidence.

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Yeah, they are creating fans.

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I haven't told you that yet.

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Part of city slams is to create a fan base of people who will come and watch recreational tennis.

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And pay for it.

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And how do we do this?

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Just by creating a tennis show around the matches.

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Similar to what my friend Jesse Cole does in Georgia with the Savannah bananas.

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I bet you heard of him, right?

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I haven't heard of this Savannah bananas.

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I don't know.

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Just he call.

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I'm like, wait a minute.

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There's a name I don't know.

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Oh my gosh.

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Oh, no.

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All right.

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We've something we weren't expecting.

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Savannah bananas.

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I like them.

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I'm not.

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I'm actually communicating with them.

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Jesse Cole first.

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Okay.

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Picture this.

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Picture this.

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There is a tennis.

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A baseball club of the the coastal league.

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Minor league in Savannah, Georgia.

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They had before this man Jesse Cole took over as the owner and manager.

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They had in their 4,000 seed stadium.

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They had a hundred or 200 people for home coming to home games.

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Right?

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Okay.

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Now picture now fast forward to this 2023.

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They have every home game is sold out with 4,000 people and they have a 10,000 people waiting

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list to come for a season tickets.

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They have fans all over the world from Georgia to Tokyo.

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Everywhere in the world they have fans who are traveling to Georgia to watch matches if they

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can get tickets.

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That is matches.

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That is baseball.

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That is baseball.

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Baseball.

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Baseball.

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Yeah.

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This is baseball.

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How does it do it?

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He creates this show around baseball.

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I want to do the same although I told him already I'm not creating a clown show.

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He does a lot of clown show stuff which is very attractive to baseball people.

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I don't think it will be attractive to tennis folks but we will still create a show around

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the city's lands.

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Basically for the at the moment for the higher level matches like the Southern California

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State championships and the state championships.

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So create a show.

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Bobby comes to me the other day.

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We should be doing what ACDC concerts at the end after after matches in Atlanta.

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There would be not only music you will see the two conga drums there.

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That is something you will hear at the matches of course.

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We will have an empire who is also a host who likes to speak and this funny and potentially

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a funny tennis pro.

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We will have programs for kids for adults.

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We have show matches.

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For instance, a junior will challenge everyone in the audience for a game and you will kick everyone's

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butt.

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I can guarantee you that.

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And stuff like this.

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There will be a lot of things around recreational tennis player matches.

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What I mean, recreational 7-0 combined that's bad tennis compared to the pros.

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But it'll still be funny and people will come and pay to watch those matches.

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Okay.

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I'm in.

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Bobby's miles.

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I mean, I love the the mightily baseball.

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I mean, I went to when I was getting my graduate degree in sports administration.

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I didn't make it as a player.

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So my thought was I was going to go through the minor league system in baseball and make my way

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to the Yankees that way.

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And that's all if you remember the movie Bull Durham and there's the Crown Prince of baseball

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Max Pankin.

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Well, you know, literally would go out and talk and it was fun because you had to because

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you're in these small towns and you had to make it a complete show.

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You were going out there.

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And, you know, unfortunately for baseball, it's just so rudimentary that they'd never been

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able to take.

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But I was just reading some of the things about, you know, there's a time limit which baseball

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fights the time limit all the time.

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They're trying to speed up the pitchers.

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I love what I laughed was because they if you hit a foul ball on the fan catches it.

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It's now.

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I'm like, well, that's awesome.

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So it's interactive.

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So I mean, it's an experience.

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And I am a fan of experiences that, you know, you the more you get the people to participate

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obviously, the more they're going to take hold in it.

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My thing though, where this it's Savannah, you're going to go on a ghost tour.

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You're going to go to the beach or this is something to do.

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How do you compete in the bigger cities when you say Southern California, how much geography

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you cover it?

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Something California.

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Yes, from the border from the Mexican border up to Lancaster Palmdale.

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Make us feel even.

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Wow, so you're going past LA.

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You're going past New York.

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You're going past LA, of course.

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Yeah.

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I don't know if you know, but it's the Sunday area that is the hotbed of tennis in all of Southern

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California.

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So they have more pros in Sunday, yeah, you go anywhere else in more players.

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It'll be a show where people say, the people come home and say, that was great.

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And they spread the word because they loved it.

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And they want to come back next time.

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And it's not so important how good the tennis is.

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Yeah, so hold the bat.

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It makes a lot of sense.

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My wife would be often, before talking, if we're talking, bring the family.

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You've given me a chance to bring my wife and kids and my wife's always been trying to figure

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that out, Jovis always saying, why is tennis so competitive?

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Look at it.

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But you're coming from the competitive standpoint, but from a family standpoint, the bringing

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people out, I think that's a great plan.

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I think that goes in the right direction, especially for Atlanta, because we're a social

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tennis world.

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Yeah.

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Well, in the beginning, we will have just, we'll encourage the players to bring family, of course.

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And it has to grow slowly.

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We'll do photos and videos and on-court interviews like the pros.

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And it'll grow from there, the word of mouth was spreaded.

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And of course, the ever-puckly system, the human, the press releases and he'll guide us to

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how to spread the word efficiently everywhere.

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The entire thing is about making tennis more fun for people and for fans, not only for players,

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but for fans.

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Well, there you have it.

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We want to thank Rejovenate for use of the studio and be sure to hit that follow button.

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Also, we've been nominated for a podcast award.

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The best tennis podcast.

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For more about that, check the show notes.

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And with that, we're out.

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See you next time.