Dustin Heise 0:00

Today's guest is Matthew Joles, president and CEO of Gotham Sports and Entertainment Holdings, where he's building ventures across youth sport, athlete development, and sports entertainment with a focus on long-term impact and opportunity. His work sits at the intersection of sport, media, and athlete first innovation. Welcome, Matthew. Maybe just kick off with Sharon. How did you get to continuing to lead at Gotham Sports and Entertainment?

Matthew Jolles 0:24

Yeah, I think, you know, for me, it's always been uh my career has been always finding the next step, the next evolution, learning more, sponging off of everybody that I've gotten a chance to work under in the past. And, you know, I've been fortunate enough in my career to have worked under some great leaders who helped uh teach me the ways of leadership that I've uh kind of built that into the culture of what we do here at GSEH at Gotham Sports and uh and what I want to now instill down into the people that I'm tasked with leading.

Dustin Heise 0:56

Amazing, man. Well, again, it seems like you continue to lead with humility and obviously honoring those that have helped build you up. You know, maybe just uh a thought around, you know, you've built your career, but also the the pathway to to Gotham around youth sports, media entertainment. When did you first realize sport could be a platform for something bigger than competition?

Matthew Jolles 1:18

I think ultimately that for me really came out of my time at ESPN. I was part of the Global X events division. We were focused on X games. And at the time in that 2001 to 2010 period, X games and action sports was really kind of like coming in to play. And there was a lot of grassroots at the time, and there was a lot of advocacy for you know inclusion. Uh, people at the time were still looking at skateboarders and snowboarders and BMXers and everything as like these renegade punk kids that you know took over a park, um, you know, kind of thing, not realizing that there was actually something bigger and broader, that there was not just the sport itself, but it was sports and it was culture, and it was so many different countries and nationalities, and it was, you know, fashion and music and industry and all of it came together. And I think X Games really helped to drive that to where now, you know, look, we see skateboarding and BMX and snowboard events in the Olympics.

Dustin Heise 2:27

Oh my gosh, are you ever singing from the choir sheet that I sing from every single day? I'm so excited to uh to continue to just build on this. Okay, man. Well, you've talked about making youth sports transformational and not transactional. What defining moment made that belief so personal for you? And you know, that was a great lead-in with you, your time at ESPN, but like can you build on that? Of like what made it so personal for Matthew Joles?

Matthew Jolles 2:53

So for me, it was the fact that I grew up in the youth sports, you know, field, basically, you know, from being a soccer player to being a baseball player to being a lacrosse player, going through the time of playing in just local rec leagues into academy programs through high school into college. And it did not cost $3,000 a year for me to play. And it's gotten ridiculous, honestly, to for lack of a better word, yeah, of what the costs have become for youth athletes. And so really what came out of it was a mission plan by me to take a look at the industry of youth sports as a whole and say, does it really cost $3,000 for a player to be operated within the construct of a team, a soccer academy, a lacrosse academy, a field hockey, whatever? And when you look at the cost that it actually is for an organization to operate that player, it's nowhere close. And so we looked at it from the aspect of what then is the right margin that makes our company accountably operate, but where we would be able to also generate that revenue in a way that returns on investment in back into the players themselves, into the coaches, into the program, which why from our soccer academy, I'll use as an example perspective, we are a third of the cost of most of the other clubs in the New York City, New Jersey area. And people kind of look at that and they say, Well, how can you possibly be providing anything for your players? And the reality is there are players who have come to our club from other clubs who have been like, I didn't get uniform packages like this at my other club, I didn't get nutrition, you know, consultation, I didn't get sports performance consultation, I didn't get to work with the physio, I didn't get mental health coaching. And they're yet the parents are saying, well, we're only, but we're paying half of what we were paying the other club. Because for us, the investment in what we do is not for us to line our pockets. We all live comfortably. There's not a single person in this company who doesn't live comfortably.

Dustin Heise 5:26

Yep.

Matthew Jolles 5:27

But at the same time, so too are the parents of these players, and so too are these players, because we're not taking their money away from them and we're giving them more back.

Dustin Heise 5:36

Holy smokes, the value that you guys have looked at this from also, I want to just take back yes, the value, but the values that you've deployed against making sure that this is accessible and looked at it from a really truly business math and also ensuring that it makes sense for all stakeholders and thinking about end user, but also those that can actually run a business and keep it sustainable. I love this and I want to dig into that more. Also want to dig into that more beyond this call because I want to learn with you from you and you know, continue to perpetuate that. That's exactly what sport needs globally, is that kind of thought process mindset and finding ways for solutions to be able to continue to perpetuate this for all of the stakeholders. I love where you're going with this, and and no wonder you're doing the good work you're doing. You know, a lot of leaders say they want to change the system. You clearly are. What have you learned about what it actually takes to build a better one?

Matthew Jolles 6:33

So for me, it's always been that the pyramid of leadership actually is not from the summit down. The mountain is actually reversed. The people like me who have to be at the top of it, the the president, the CEO, you know, senior partners, etc., we're not actually the top. We're actually the bottom. We need to be the ones who get behind our staff and push them up. We need to be the servant leaders that are here. I always say one of my favorite phrases is that I do not have 25 employees on my department team. If I have me, I'm an employee for 25 people. If they don't work for me, I work for them. If I'm not doing my job, they can't do their job. So for them to be able to do their job, I have to do my job, which is to make sure that they have all the resources in play to be able to accomplish the tasks that they want to accomplish. Make sure that they know what they need to know. Make sure that they're getting the advice that they need to get, make sure that their needs are being cared about. And if I'm doing that, if I am behind my team pushing them along, then they will all get to the top of the mountain. I've been to the top of the mountain and I've come back down so that I can bring other people up to the top of the mountain and go, hey, take a look at the view.

Dustin Heise 8:02

Matthew, that is such a beautiful nugget of brilliance of how you just shared that. Clearly, your world-class leadership is uh, I'm sure, within the team appreciated. And, you know, I'm just grateful to be able to just share, you know, this with our listeners and the ability for those to continue to learn and see how we can serve and support our teams to do the good work that they're hungry to do. And just enabling that, you know, through again that that servant leadership mindset. Thanks for sharing that. That's inspirational for sure. Thanks for that. You've worked behind the scenes in live sports, you now lead in the front. How has your view of leadership changed through those different roles, Matthew? And just maybe just dig in a little bit about that and and build on what you shared earlier on X games and things of that nature.

Matthew Jolles 8:47

Yeah, it's a little bit different when you're behind the scenes and people don't see you, they don't really know who you are. And then all of a sudden, when you're out there and you're the face, now you're the front, you're the one that's getting interviewed on the news, you're the one that's doing podcast shows, you have to talk about things and it becomes a little bit different. And, you know, you have to sometimes change yourself a little bit, but don't do it in such a way that you become a completely different person. I am still me in a full construct of, you know, how I was 25 years ago. I'm still the same person. Sure. I'm still the same me. But at the same time, I realize that I have a duty and I have a responsibility in my position as a leader now to be willing to tell people, hey, this is okay, or hey, you could do this better, or hey, let me help you. And those are three things that I really, you know, have found leadership really comes out of that. It comes out of that willingness to know that when you're out front, now you've got to be the person that is gonna be the one people are gonna sponge off of.

Dustin Heise 10:00

Oh, a hundred percent. And and again, the growth that you've experienced and you're sharing, you know, even today, you know, that mindset that you've been able to deploy is uh is really evident, is truly is. And in a world where athletes are often treated like assets, how do you build an environment where people still feel seen and supported?

Matthew Jolles 10:20

So one of the things that we're really key on here with inside of all of our sports programs, all of our clubs, is we do not do numbers. We do not have client ID numbers, customer ID numbers. We do not have player ID numbers, like we do for purposes of registering the player with US soccer or USA field hockey or US lacrosse, but we do not do numbers from that respect. We do names. Players are people, they are individuals, they are sons and daughters, they are brothers and sisters, they are boys and girls, they are young men and young ladies. And we want to make sure that what we're doing is taking the time to get to know who every single one of these players are, whether it's from the coaches that are working with them on a day-to-day basis to the people who are all the way at the top of it, who are me. I have literally shown up to our U13 Boys Academy team practice and just walked around and just talked with the players and talked with the parents so that they know who I am and I know who they are. And then when I see them at a game, I see a tournament that they're playing in, or I see a game that they have, and I can walk right up to every single one of those kids and I go, Hey, Brian, how are you doing? You ready to go? Tyler, you good? You ready to go? Zach, you awesome? You ready to go today? And they look at me and they're like, that's the head of the company and he knows who I am. He remembers my name. And putting that name recognition on every single player who is a part of our organization is so key to why the culture that we have here is so different than every other club. If you have to stop for a second and ask, who are you to a player or a parent, you messed up.

Dustin Heise 12:13

I love how you've built this organization and and continue to lead it in such a way where you're ensuring that culture is the foundation and ensuring that in every one of those opportunities, you've made a personal and people feel like they're a big part of it. And not only are they important, but the the opportunity that they have within their life is going to be incredibly meaningful. I also love how you've just made it incredibly tangible for a sustainability perspective, like we chatted a bit about earlier. And you know, I'd just love to think you know, hear your thoughts around the future of sports culture. What kind of impact you hope that you and your organization is able to leave behind?

Matthew Jolles 12:54

I think for us as an organization, as a whole, as individual people, even, we want our organization to be the ones that people recognize as not just here to suck up money. You know, and we've heard that so much over the past month, even about these private equity firms that have come in and they're just like doing everything in the world. There's like, we're gonna dump tons of money in, but they don't care about the product. They care about this. They care about do they have something they can say, oh well, we own these tournaments, we own this club, we own these venues and facilities. It's for them, it's all about pieces, it's all about things. That's not what it is for us. So the impact that we're going to leave is when somebody comes out of our program and they go, say, off to college, and they're saying, Oh, you know, well, what club did you come from for soccer per se? And they're like, Well, I played for Independence FC and it was the best four years that I ever spent. And then those kids come back in the summertime and go, hey, how can I help out in the camps? How can I help out in the clinics? How can I like, you know, co-coach a team, you know, or whatever. Or they come back and they play for our college development teams in the UPSL in the summertime, or they graduate college and they go play for our major arena soccer league team as a pro player. And the Noel DeFede from St. Peter's University, um, prime example, you know, who plays on our MASLW team. And so that's what we want to do. We want to leave a lifetime impact where people come back and they say, this was the best place that I was ever a part of.

Dustin Heise 14:41

Amazing. Well, without a doubt, you're gonna do that and you're gonna have that kind of impact. And the organization you're leading is is building and and we'll see that through. I love how you're setting a new standard. And I can't thank you enough for this conversation today, Matthew. Holy smokes, that was action packed. And uh can't thank you enough. Look forward to doing this again.

Matthew Jolles 15:01

Thank you very much. Appreciate it.