Inside the NBA's most expensive arena (with Clippers Owner Steve Ballmer & AT&T CEO John Stankey)

Introducing Steve Ballmer & John Stankey we're in a weird Community I didn't grow up in a place where you had two teams in the same sport that's an unusual thing I got to tell you you know in Seattle you know everybody's for the Seahawks they may be cracking on them they're mad at the way they're playing but everybody's emotionally invested different in Los Angeles yeah what Steve met to say he in a special Community not a weird Community it's a very thank thank thank you John I'm Bob saffan and I'm here with Steve balber the owner of the LA Clippers and former CEO of Microsoft and John stany the CEO of AT&T Steve John it's great to have you with us thank you Bob it's good to be with you you're both in Las Vegas What will make the Intuit Dome different? for AT&T's Innovation exchange conference with the NBA you've partnered together on the LA Clippers new Arena named the Intuit Dome I guess John you were too late to get the naming rights is that what happened we we sometimes know we should play a supporting role so this is the case we're doing it so I wanted to start by asking you guys what what will make the int Dome different yeah what we tried to do was to set out to build the most exciting intense Fan Experience in the world now we work on that all the time in terms of our team and its competitiveness and its hard work and energy but but we also view the fan as kind of part of the product how excited do our fans get how intimate does it feel I mean it's a live event you want people to feel emotion it's a little different than just watching at home you can get emotional but you're getting emotional with a lot of people so we built a tighter Bowl we built things that are steeper we do have a very large uh scoreboard so we can tell you more it can be more of a heads up activity even though we recognize that people will want to use a second screen which is why we've run power so you can charge your phone at literally any one of our 17,700 uh plus seats you come into our building we have a zoom through technology so if you just want to walk in friction free or you want to walk in grab some food we have these Zoom throughs we call them all through the building we have cameras in the building and microphones in the building so that we can tell who's the most enthusiastic fan who's making the most noise and make sure we're rewarding people for those activities we had a vision of what we wanted uh we got a lot of input on top of that from The Architects but it had to also come from the technology that underpins and AT&T's been uh you know our core partner on that well I joked earlier about playing a supporting role but that's you know exactly what we're doing when you have somebody like Steve who has the kind of energy that he has and he has the kind of desire to change change things let him paint and do what he wants to do creatively as he takes us forward we've often heard the term when we talk about a home oh you know the home's got great bones and I would say Steve's Dome has great bones because what we've done is we've taken some of the most robust fiber infrastructure in Los Angeles that AT&T has and we've connected it to his new home and in his new home we put 7 and 1 12 miles of fiber in and that fiber is going to be connected to some of the best technology that's available today to connect customers that walk into his facility to the internet and to services that is going to make their experience wonderful and most importantly because the bones are done well as technology changes and as they come up with new ideas moving forward they're going to have an opportunity to paint on that canvas in any way they want when City Field first Building the infrastructure for future tech opened in New York I don't know 15 years ago one one of the owners Jeff wilpon gave me this private tour and he was so excited about how they'd hardwire each seat so they could eventually add screens to each one and of course it turned out that the screens everyone wanted were in their pockets and Wi-Fi was What mattered like how do you think about sort of infusing the tech of today but protecting for the tech of tomorrow so that you can take advantage of that I I don't think you can actually future proof because most of us don't know exactly what the future is going to be but what you try to do is you do what you can foundationally to make sure that when when that future comes you can get there at the lowest marginal cost possible changing out the end points putting new electronics in that do something a little bit different that's going to require incremental investment over time but what you don't want to get into is you w't want to be disturbing the bones of the building right you don't want to get underneath and all the cement the concrete and I think we've done the right things to make sure that there's a lot of flexibility there I I bet Steve you love hearing those words incremental investment right that's that that's bit like what being the owner of an NBA team is it's constantly incremental investment look I I know enough about tech to have absolutely no surprise you know I come out of the software business we had recurring licenses because we knew we were always going to bring new things to Market and so we asked our customers to plan with us for ongoing cost and ongoing kind of improvement John and I were talking about it and I may underestimate exactly what that might cost us but at the end of the day make no mistake about it I know we have screens that are ahead of the game today and it'll be behind the game in five or six years we will wind up making more investment you I give you just a small example we have four game controller type buttons built into every seat so that you can interact directly with the bigboard okay what is the wireless technology that enables that to happen how do we reduce the latency so people really can interact what will that look like let's use gamification if you want people to be able to I don't know earn points by activities they're engaged in in the building anticipating what the next play is or you know we can ask people to do that as long as we have the infrastructure that'll let us do that essentially in real time I'll give you another Tech Challenge sure near and dear to my heart I want to get four replay angles up on the screen within a second of the play being whistled dead I want them all up there we have the screen real estate to do it but if you have to wait for a minute when there's a momentary pause in the game this stuff's going to have to come and it's got to come up and it's got to be real time and that requires a lot of work and doing that that fast I mean historically that's been a human uh chosen highlight right to to show or angle is this something where like there's software on the back end about you know automating that so that's faster also the possibility to do things with AI in this instance winds up being uh very good there are a lot of possibilities and yet some human being will decide Now's the Time because you still need to have human beings that have a sense of what they want the game Flow to look like now five years 10 years from now maybe we just trust the software to do all that but for now um there's a you know also call it AI assisted activities when you How AI is poised to impact society talk about AI I'm just curious where you both are on the the hype versus enthusiasm meter on AI I mean I know Steve you you recently surpassed Bill Gates on the billionaires list thank to Microsoft's booming stock and that open AI deal do you have any thoughts about where we're getting ahead of ourselves with AI and where we're just getting started um I don't think it's a hype I think we're at a fundamental transition it's a significant as the founding of the internet back as we entered the 2000s and you know we sit here today we we were back in 1999 2000 saying oh you know this internet's all hyped up and we've got the internet bubble that burst and all these valuations were out of whack well you can't sit here today and say that the internet was overhyped and I think AI in 10 years will do the same thing for us yeah there's going to be some Cycles where it accelerates or it slows down but ultimately you know software is a fabulous technology that I view as pretty immature we may just be moving into the adolescence of software technology right now ai is one of the things that's going to take software into adulthood and as it takes software into adulthood we're going to see phenomenal changes how we get entertained how we work how we learn how we live and so I I don't think it's hype I think we're we're at the dawn of a moment where all of us are going to look back and not remember how it was done 10 years from now yeah I think it's one of these things where in the short term people first you get impressed then you say ah it doesn't do everything I wanted it to do so in the long run I think things are actually underhyped and in the short run they may be overhyped but in the long run I I sort of take John's perspective I I'll tell you a small story when I was at Microsoft people would say what's the new next wave and remember I've been gone 10 10 years but my favorite scenario is the one where you can just say to your computer get me ready for my trip to uh to visit AT&T and it would find our customer interactions it would find any relevant sales data uh it would assemble it the way my assistant was forced to assemble it that was my favorite scenario well today you can't quite get there but you can now you get line of 10 years later but you have line of site you have the core software infrastructure to do that and the level of innovation you'll see on top of that uh I think will be mindblowing anyway I'm enthusiastic I should get off my high horse on this so we um we we Balancing the digital and physical experience started earlier talk talking about fans and um thinking about the new Arena I can see as as a team owner Steve you want fans focused on the live experience on what's happening on the floor John in your business you might be perfectly happy if fans were on their phones the whole time like did did you talk about that about how the phone experience interacts with The Fan Experience I'll let him go first look I want people with their heads up watching the game I I I make no no bones about that so everything you have to look down for should be something that is very Niche if it's important we should have it up on the screen now are there plenty of niches that various people will be looking for on their phone the answer is yes but you didn't come to the game to have your head down you came to have your head up but the fact that you can still be you know sort of supported by your second screen that that's that's the world today that's that's not something to be argued about or fought about but we need to make our experience attractive enough because I want our fans cheering I want their head in the game now with that said I'm still pulling my phone out during the middle of game and okay where did you know I don't know player Charlie where did they go to college you know what pick were they were in the draft I'm not going to get everything up on our big on our big screen so it's it's clear you know we're not trying to deny today's realities and we're trying to make sure that nonetheless you're engaged in the game there's a generation coming up that just isn't going to do anything if they're not overlapping and multitasking that's just kind of how they've been raised and what they do today is as crazy as I find it they are going to be doing two things at once the fact of the matter is you know data usage on the mobile network is going to go up 30% a year whether Steve wants people looking at their phone at a game or not the reality of people being a little bit distracted from multitasking part of the design of the arena is to in fact play into that and the AT&T experience aspect of this is to provide a social place where people can go interact with AI generated creative user generated content uh they can do that in a way that makes their visit to the experience relevant that becomes content that they can pull into their life and transmit out those are all good things I think that as long as it doesn't take away from the core product that are just going to make the experience unique as to why you go to something live as opposed to staying anchored in your living room I'll tell you one thing would piss me off though if people were actually looking at their phone to see exactly what's on the court I'd say ma'am we really screwed up our experience so you're you're both in Las Steve Ballmer on the state of sports betting Vegas so I I have to ask like how much of the connectivity in the arena is about betting FanDuel DraftKings you know attendees is interested in specifics Beyond sort of the final score yeah I would say we did not build our Arena assuming gambling was the way of interaction because it may or may not be legal at any given point but we built our infrastructure I mean it was important to ask John and his guys to do this so that we have very low latency and whether you're gambling or a bunch of other scenarios the latency is important does it bug you Steve that with wagering that like fandom isn't always about winning and losing but about specific moments or players or stats I mean it's I'm sure it's a very different from the way that you watch the games is that Evolution do you feel like that's a good thing for the sport or just it is what it is it is what it is I think if you come to our build I don't need to worry most of the people who come to our building will either clearly be our fans or unfortunately we occasionally get some of the other teams fans in the building uh if really you're all about wagering you probably shouldn't come into the arena and watch it's def focusing it's distracting you can only watch one game at a time uh I would probably go someplace else if my primary purpose was to bet it like maybe Vegas some folks say it like it keeps the game exciting for them at slower moment you know there's all this talk about what it how it'll make the game better you're not necessarily buying that no no look look I'm not I I do buy into it in the F forget the actual gambling gambling uh you know look whatever the law provides will happen and we will support it but just think even about um Fantasy Football Fantasy Football galvanizes that game and whether it's through fantasy or gambling those are John talked about gamification which I think about you know first thing that goes through my mind is is fantasy but there's many other ways to do it and at the end of the day fans are going to do what they want to do our job is to make them want to be with help our team win that's our job that's not the Fan's job and the fan then can can choose their own path you know through the experience there's been a lot of very Building a community of fans in LA positive talk in La about how the Clippers are investing in the community even small touches like a display inside a basketball jerseys from every High School in La I think what when you think about building Community a as a business as a brand like how important is it for the Clippers and I'm curious too then John is it any less important for AT&T the people we hire we want to be beneficial to our community we're in the process of reserving every parks and wreck basketball court in LA county because we're we're trying to communicate community we're in a weird Community I didn't grow up in a place where you had two teams in the same sport that's an unusual thing I got to tell you you know in Seattle you know everybody's for the Seahawks they may be cracking on them they're mad at the way they're playing but everybody's emotionally invested different in Los Angeles and so we have to build our community in a community that you know has largely grown up with the other team being the the leading team that's won the you know the championships so we're building our community uh I you know our community we we we say is you know little more hardcore we call it you know street lights over spotlights uh that's that's our that's our community in La yeah what Steve me to say is in a special Community not a weird Community it's a very thank thank thank you John but for for there's not many cities that could support two team and if you haven't I think John remind me you grew up in La if I remember correctly it's just it's just an unusual thing unless you've lived basically in either New York or LA to have yes I'm in New York so I I grew up you know where it was all about picking sides right it it ends up defining the community in certain ways the this the side that you pick right look Bob what we think about is it's pretty straightforward we're we're in the business of connecting people to the internet and the reality of our society right now is not everybody can get on the internet in a scaled way and that means they sometimes can't apply for a job or they can't get the medical advice they need so you know La is a big part of our Market California is a huge market for us but uh we've got some more work to do and that's why we've been doing some things like targeting uh more affordable internet access for those people who can't afford to pay the full boat working actively to try to build literacy capabilities or Learning Centers around the Los Angeles area our connectivity for what we do the Clippers and the in Dome is just one part of what we do for the broader City each and every day and until we get everybody connected the internet our work isn't done I mean part of bonding with the Rebuilding trust after AT&T’s data breach community is is about trust I know you you had a big data breach at AT&T H how does that impact the way you interact with the community how how do you think about rebuilding that trust look you earn trust every day um we're obviously disappointed that we had this event I I can tell you it's a very challenging environment out there right now if I were to kind of look ahead I think the reality is with the geopolitical Dynamics that are going on and the state of Technology we're probably going to as a society see more of this occurring um I think what you do when you have an unfortunate event like this you have to do your point make sure that you don't do anything to further damage or jeopardize that trust I'm proud of the team and the decisions that we've made made to try to mitigate and minimize the impact to our customers and um most importantly we learn from it we learn about what we need to do different so that we can avoid having this kind of an event or at least a repeat of this in the future but it's a pretty Dynamic environment that we're all dealing with right now just how challenging data security privacy and those things are How the role of CEO has changed over the last decade there is so much going on in our world today you know Ai and cyber security and sports and the political landscape and is and Ukraine and China it's almost too many things to to follow when you two talk as Business Leaders when you talk with other top leaders are are there topics and questions that you're most focused on like how do you know what to pay attention to I I find myself spending a lot of time and listening and asking advice from people in similar capacities to M about how do you keep the people that you're responsible for engaged and feeling good about what they're doing um unlike a politician maybe that is successful if they get 51% of the vote I kind of walk into my job every day and feel like I got to get 100% of the votes of everybody who works for my company um and that requires a very very different set of skills than maybe 10 or 15 years ago and you try to talk to anybody about you know how are you navigating what are you doing that's working what makes a difference and I think we're all learning through this right now about how to work in a little bit more fragmented polarized Society to make work kind of one of those safe places where people come Steve do you do you think it's harder being a a CEO now than when you were it's been 10 years I I'm not going to count the Clippers I think of myself as an executive chairman I don't really run things dayto day so I don't have the job that John does and haven't for 10 years now do I believe it's a tougher job in some ways it's a different job it's a different job we used to joke in Microsoft everybody got a private office that was a real attraction point for us during the 80s and 90s and people say these things are generational I think you know a lot of things are more uh reflect the diversity of the workforce extroverts guess what they're happy not working in their own office introverts they want to work in their own office you know I think they are patterns that change but you know the the basic job hasn't changed now would do I think I would be effective in this environment probably not with the same style and approaches that I used you know during the bulk of of my career so I uh I respect the kind of work that John and SAA Nadella who runs Microsoft now you know CEO is a hard job I I I do know that and I know they haven't gotten any easy easier and every time I see John I am reminded nothing got any easier about being a CEO I think everything changes and I think you know it doesn't matter whether you're a CEO it doesn't matter whether you're a school teacher things have changed and um we have to accept that things are going to change and if you don't accept that that's the reality and your job is to figure out how to adjust to the new environment you're in then it's life is going to be really really hard because the rate and pace of change is not going to slow down you have to come in with a optimism you know a positive attitude that you can make a difference and attack those issues and if you do that you'll do just fine and we'll sort it out and we'll look back and someday we'll talk about this is having been the good old days uh but right now it feels like it's a bit of a challenge so the uh Hosting concerts at the Intuit Dome and Kia Forum the first event at Intuit Dome is a concert with Bruno Mars in mid August will will you both be there uh I certainly will be there I am hopeful that John will be there he's as he knows he's he's certainly been invited on the way up he just mentioned it to me I know how it is in these big CEO offices you don't always know these kinds of things you should see the long list of concert invitations that are sitting on the desk of my you you picked a great opening act though I you know Bruno Mars is probably one of the greatest live entertainers I've ever seen he'll do a great job chrisen in the center and I hope to be there yeah no I I mean listen live live concert sales have been a little disappointing for a lot of artists this year provided your name isn't Taylor Swift right actually I'm going to push back on that as part of the process even though intu's not open uh we did buy the uh Forum now the Kia Forum in La you know storyed music venue and what we're finding is concert after concert we're outperforming actually uh our expectations in terms of attendance so I I want to be a little more bullish uh on that than you are Bob at the risk of this being a layup for Predictions for the 2024-25 NBA Season each of you uh any predictions about the upcoming NBA season I Steve you may not be an unbiased Observer here yeah the Clippers are going to be one hell of a team hardworking gritty putting the effort in every day how far that'll take us nobody knows particularly in the Western Conference where we compete basically it's so damn competitive part of it will come down to Good Health the Mavericks who knocked us out last year they came into the end of the season hot and and it you know hey they made it to the NBA finals which is amazing achievement although I'm sure they'll tell you nobody remembers who came in second place in most finals and like us them we all want to win it all I just hope the Western Conference doesn't beat the snot out of each other where they don't have enough left to win in the finals this year that's my only concern somebody from the West needs to win guys this was great thank thank you so much for doing it thank you very much I appreciate you investing the time with us and Steve we're excited as hell it's seeing your vision and your dream come to reality it's good that you finally have a home that you can call your own it's going to be exciting to watch well thanks and thanks for helping us build the best home we can I appreciate it n [Music]