Interview: Sarah Spain, new NWSL co-owner
Lindsay talks to ESPN's Sarah Spain about becoming the new co-owner of the Chicago Red Stars, what ownership meetings look like, how she plans to navigate any conflicts of interest with her role at ESPN, and the future of professional women's sports.
This episode was produced by Ali Lemer. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.
Transcript
Lindsay: Hello hello hello flamethrowers, welcome to Burn It All Down. Lindsay Gibbs here, and I am so so excited to be joined by our great friend of the show, Sarah Spain. You all probably know her as ESPN’s…What do I call you, host? Commentator? Around The Horn guest? [laughs]
Sarah: Yeah, I think the shortest is writer, radio host and TV personality – which allows me to either be hosting or acting as a panelist/talking head/reporter.
Lindsay: I like that. TV personality!
Sarah: Yeah. [laughs]
Lindsay: I love that. [laughs] Sarah Spain, thanks so much for joining us.
Sarah: Thanks for having me!
Lindsay: So, we’re actually here to talk about a new title for you, which is a co-owner of the Chicago Red Stars of the National Women’s Soccer League. First of all, congratulations!
Sarah: Thank you, so exciting!
Lindsay: Now, I hate starting with broad questions but I don’t know where else to start except for: how did this happen? [laughter] Take me through, like, how–
Sarah: That’s exactly what I would be asking as well!
Lindsay: Yeah. [laughs]
Sarah: Very surprising. I’ll try to keep it fairly short, but Abby Wambach was honored at the ESPYs alongside Peyton Manning and Kobe Bryant. They all retired the same year, and she was onstage with them feeling incredibly honored to be considered in their pairing, and they all talked about wrapping up their careers. Then as she walked off the stage she thought to herself, “Now I gotta start a whole new career, and these guys are set.” They can go into anything they want or nothing at all, whereas I have to figure out what else I can do to make money and start fresh. She told that anecdote at a Time’s Up event, and Natalie Portman, one of the co-founders of Time’s Up, was there, and was thinking to herself how BS it is that women could have the same number of hours and tears and injuries and passion and devotion to something that they love, they can work their entire lives at sport, and be done with it and have so little to show for it in terms of both monetary gains and also cache and power within the sports world compared to their male counterparts.
She was like, “This is BS, how do we fix this? What can we do?” Part of Abby Wambach’s Book Wolf Pack was about if they don't offer you a seat at the table, build a new table instead of trying to find more chairs or all the other solutions that are good, but let's not even think that small. Let’s just build a whole table. So, that’s what Angel City FC is, the expansion team that starts playing next year in the NWSL. That 60+ now group of owners was such an inspirational deviation from what we’ve all become used to, and I saw it and I thought, wow, that’s cool! My friend Julie Foudy is an owner? Now, Julie Foudy is my friend, but she’s also one of the greatest soccer players of all time [laughter] and a hall of famer, and a 99er, and an analyst, and all these other amazing things.
So, we’re not the same, but the fact that she was working at ESPN and is not a bajillionaire like Jerry Jones – successful, but she doesn’t have a yacht that looks like it’s in James Bond – had me thinking, oh, so this is something that could look different than what we all became used to. So, I ended up having Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach on my podcast and panel for the ESPNW summit. They’re both co-owners of Angel City, and they kind of mentioned the process and doing it. I was like, I wanna be an owner! I’m a Red Stars fan, you know? I had thrown a party at a Red Stars game a couple of years ago just to try to get people to come out and check out a game and see how great it was, for no other reason than just I love the product and I thought it was a lot of fun.
So, I ended up…The owner came to a party I threw – I had had Budweiser sponsor it, and Malnati, so I was giving away all sorts of free pizza and beer and Malört shots and telling everyone, you know, “Buy your tickets and then come party with me, let’s check out a game.” So, I started talking to the owner about it, and it wasn’t until October of this past year…Again, I may have manifested it slightly by mentioning it in my panels and podcasts. “I wanna own the Red Stars!” [laughs] But not knowing that they actually were thinking about doing a capital raise and expanding their ownership group.
So, he reached out to me last fall and almost immediately, once I talked to my financial advisor and looked at how feasible it was to put in the amount for the shares that were required or requested, then I was onboard. Then it was just months of waiting to be able to tell everyone about it.
Lindsay: That would be the hardest secret in the entire world to keep.
Sarah: [laughs] Yeah!
Lindsay: I don’t think I could do it. [laughter]
Sarah: It’s one of the only ones I have. I have a very big mouth.
Lindsay: I would have done lots of…What's that thing they call, like, vaguebooking?
Sarah: Oh, I did that.
Lindsay: Okay. [laughs]
Sarah: Sure. A lot of wink wink or, like, “I have some news! Haha! Yell ya later!” I did tell a couple of friends and of course my famliy, but yeah. It was also a little self-serving because it was like, my little leak is not gonna be as cool as when there’s actually a big press announcement. So, it was partly like, this is worth keeping the secret.
Lindsay: Absolutely. So, what does it mean when you’re a co-owner? Because like you said, how many people are in this group with you now?
Sarah: I think there’s 16 for us right now. I does depend on the team and it does depend, at least for our group and from what I've heard from the other teams, a lot of it is dependent on your desire to be proactive vs more of an ambassador vs more of just a face. So, for our group the goal was really to get people who had direct Chicago ties, who were part of almost I think…Colleen Mares, Chance the Rapper’s manager, she’s in the music industry; really young, like, badass. She kind of described it as an octopus where each of us was a different leg that could reach out to marketing or music or entertainment or merch or PR or anything, and so the group that we’re with has been in meetings for about 1-2 hours every Friday since the early part of this year, since January.
So, a couple months now of really everybody being on board to meet every week, and some of the cool things that have already come out of it are Israel Idonije, former Chicago Bear, telling Arnim, “Your opinions on a team concierge are dated and are not the best way to make sure that talent wants to stick around.” Arnim always thought, “Why would we need a concierge? When I was 20 and moved to a new town I didn’t have someone showing me every little step of the way. I think it's good for them to learn.” And Israel was like, uh-uh. Anything that distracts from the focus, which is to be the greatest at what they do, is not your priority. Some of these people may come from the middle of nowhere or not be as used to a big town, and if you could take away any of their concerns by having this team concierge position that’s worth the cost that could help them with anything from housing to meals to nutrition to transportation to finding things to do outside of soccer, that's gonna help your team.
So, it’s been really cool to have him, and then Kendall Coyne Schofield’s husband Michael is also an NFL player, so for them to chime in about their experiences as professional men’s players, what kind of benefits they have and how things work for them and how can we get the women to experience the same quality as best we can with obviously a different budget and a smaller league, everything else. Then Colleen chiming in with her connections to the music industry and designers where we try to create some signature merch that we hope blows up like the WNBA sweatshirt or stuff that's gonna translate to people who aren’t even necessarily big Red Stars fans yet but might be, you know – try to get them rocking the merch and get the people to be more aware of the team. It's been really cool to be in those meetings and see and hear everybody offer different perspectives from their backgrounds. For us people are quite involved, but for other teams I know there are certainly people that are more of just ambassador types.
Lindsay: So, how do the decisions…Like, is there a voting majority? Do you guys have a say in kind of regular decisions? Just logistically.
Sarah: We haven't had anything that actually had to come to a vote yet, so Arnim is still the majority owner and then Bryan Walsh who's representing a couple of members of his family who all put in together...I think they’re calling it deputy, and so he's got significantly more shares than the rest of the owner investors. He’s sort of the deputy, and he’s on some of the paperwork and some of the stuff that requires, you know, if you have more than one owner. But Arnim’s goal was first of all equal equity across all shares and that the voices are all in there for good reason and he truly wants the ownership group to represent people of color, LGBTQ+, women, different backgrounds, different experiences, and to value the people whose opinions matter on the things that they’re chiming in on, whether that's the anthem or how much money is spent on facilities or expansion draft and how you appeal to other players once there are other teams added in where they have a choice to go. So, so far we haven't had anything that really came down to a fight, but it's early. [laughs]
Lindsay: [laughs] Yeah.
Sarah: The thing that so far, it feels like is best idea wins or most qualified wins, right? So, not the person who has the most money but the one who comes from the space that probably makes them best qualified to make a decision on whatever that thing is. But I’ll keep you updated. [laughs]
Lindsay: Yeah, keep me updated, please! You know I want to know about the drama.
Sarah: Yeah. [laughs]
Lindsay: Well especially because, I mean, going forward I think this is gonna be a really big year. There's been a players union or players association and it’s been recognized but they’ve been putting off having a collective bargaining agreement because just trying to get the league really stable – which I actually don't agree with, I think they should’ve done a CBA a while back. But that's just learning from what the WNBA did way back when, but I think it’s gonna happen this year. So, I'm wondering how much an expanded ownership group has a say in those negotiations.
Sarah: We haven’t got to that in particular yet. Basically a lot of our meetings in the last couple of months have been Arnim downloading us on all the stuff that he’s known for 13 years of being an owner.
Lindsay: Right. [laughs]
Sarah: The Red Stars are the oldest and winningest. He's been through the ups and downs and highs and lows, and so it's really a matter of telling us, “Here’s how allocation works, but now it’s changing. Here’s our relationship with US Soccer, but now it's changing.” You know? A lot is in flux and there’s a lot of information, and for people like me who like to joke “I've never had a real job even though I work very hard” – I've never had to sit in a meeting and use corporate speak and say, like, “Let's put a pin in that and get back to our fourth quarter…” Whatever. [Lindsay laughs] I don't do that stuff. So, it's been a little mini business school to hear and be a part of learning about some of the stuff like percentage of concessions or what's our stadium deal and how long and all that other stuff that I don't usually really think about.
Yeah, you know, one of the interesting things has been that I’ve made a lot of my work be about calling to task the people who are not properly investing in women's sports, the treatment of players, etc. So, I was intrigued by...And there wasn't much of it. There was a little criticism in the sense of now the people who are becoming owners are just part of the assholes. Like, there was no grey area there of, like, we would join this because we want to make it better, we wanna be the gold standard for a women's league, we wanna take all these ideas we have and actually be part of the people making the decisions. It was as if all of a sudden we've transitioned to the dark side, and that’s not gonna happen, first of all, at least not for me.
I’m not joining this, and particularly in a league like the NWSL which I do think is a good smart business investment, but not right away. I’m not expecting this…I’m not in this for ROI next year so I can be like, “Look at all this money I made.” I'm in it because I wanna build it smartly and wisely so it’s around for the next couple of generations, and that's gonna involve making it something that's beneficial to the players and is sustainable, right? It’s not simply showing up and throwing money at something and not understanding whether that allows it to keep going a decade from now.
But also that I’m not gonna be a part of anything that doesn’t represent the players the right way, and a lot of people I think are conflating things like the US Soccer Federation and the US women’s national team – that is a non-profit federation whose stated goal and purpose is to grow the game of soccer for boys and girls, women and men, and they dump way more money into the boys and men, even when they’re not good. They do not invest in the women no matter how much the women outperform expectations, blow the doors off ratings and merch sales and everything else. That is a whole different thing than a private for-profit league that still wants the pay the players and do well but is not operating on the same system. So, I want people to keep those separate, right? The idea of what US Soccer decides to do with the US women’s national team of course is related because it's a lot of the same players but it’s not the same thing as what's happening in the NWSL, and so I do think that maybe compared to some other things I’d like to think that the people in this league are on the same side.
Now, that can only go so far, right? And we saw with the WNBA what a benefit it was to figure out how to empower the players while working with the league to try to find the best way to benefit both. But right now it seems like an incredibly positive relationship between players and owners because it's still in its infancy, right? It's just about to hit 10 years, and so anybody who's in on this thus far has mostly been losing money. So, to accuse them of not wanting it to succeed or keeping profits from the players…What it comes down to is: are you investing enough to make it succeed? And if you’re not that is absolutely worthy of criticism. You have to treat it like a start-up, you have to invest in it if you want it to succeed, but it’s a whole different story than what's going on with US Soccer claiming that women’s lungs work differently and all the other bullshit that they’ve tried to use. [laughs]
Lindsay: Totally. [laughs]
Sarah: But I will say, because I’m a journalist and because I’ve been in this world, those things are very top of mind to me and I am pulling no punches in these meetings. I am asking what’s our harassment policy, where do people report? What happens when allocations change, how does that affect our salaries for our players? Training, all the stuff. I’m on top of it and I’m fine with making things uncomfortable if it means that we’re gonna make sure that we're doing things the best way possible.
Lindsay: I think there’s this mistrust sometimes between fans and ownership, and I think back and I think it was actually my very first Power Plays newsletter which was about how the myth that women’s sports are in peril is often perpetuated by those in charge of them!
Sarah: Yes!
Lindsay: For some reason they get off on being like–
Sarah: Well, the WNBA for sure! “We’re losing millions!” And you’re like, who does that!? No one does that when they want it to grow!
Lindsay: It’s just so ridiculous! And it makes me so angry, and they treat it like, “I’m in this because it’s a charity for me, not a business.”
Sarah: Right.
Lindsay: “You should respect me for doing this at all,” for deigning to give any time and investment to that. It’s the owners of the Seattle Storm, who of course are a group of 3 fans who bought the team – first all-female ownership group, I think, in pro sports – and they were fans who, when the team was going to move to Oklahoma City, they were like, no!
Sarah: Yeah. [laughs]
Lindsay: So it’s kind of the same thing. They were like, we’re not billionaires but we’re all successful businesswomen, let’s figure out a way. And they did it, of course. I think the Seattle Storm franchise has been pretty successful, but I had one of their owners, Ginny Gilder, on the podcast recently. She was talking to me about how she hopes that with the WNBA at this infection point where it’s getting close to being “really successful,” right?
Sarah: Right.
Lindsay: We’re moving closer to that. That there's a different relationship between owners and players than men’s sports has, right? The men's sports model has often been so contentious, right? So litigious, so corporate, and hoping there can be kind of a different model where we are all on the same page. So, I wonder both kind of have you thought about that going into the future, and also just being in these rooms now, seeing the other side of it…What’s been kind of the biggest thing? Have there been any eye-opening moments where you’ve seen behind the clouds and you’re like, oh, this looks very different. [laughs]
Sarah: None of those yet, and probably because I have worked in this business and in this world, right? Trying to unearth some things and trying to understand better how things work. I wonder if some of the folks from different fields are more in the background like, “Oh, I didn’t know this was how it worked.” But I would say that the balance, like I said, is always gonna be push push push for the investment to allow for expansion. I always use that analogy, but I think it's so simple – we give our sons $5 and we give our daughters a dollar and then we come back five years later and we ask our daughters why their business isn’t doing as well. We do it over and over again, and that’s what we do with women’s sports. We’re not gonna give you any coverage, any airtime, any interesting stories, any interviews, any longform. We’re gonna give you very little money and then we're gonna hold you up next to a product that’s been around decades longer with tons of investment, and shrug.
That’s not how it should be, right? But there’s an example, and I will speak only lightly on this because I don't have a ton of deep information on it, but I remember the iteration of the National Women’s Hockey League a couple of years ago, there was this very young CEO and she had big plans and she really wanted to crush it, and she promised a lot for pay and insurance and everything else, and it did not last hardly a season even. I don’t even know if it made it a season. So, that’s the thing – you need to be sustainable while simultaneously investing, and that's why people who are critical of this new NWSL, the biggest part of it is safety net. Safety net! All of these people putting in all this money means let’s go out and do the things we’ve always wanted to do, that we've looked and the bottom line and said, “If we do that we're losing even more,” or risking the possibility of paying the players this or that.
So, I think just an influx of capital into a product like this is massive, in part because we can reframe for Arnim, our majority owner who’s been at this for years, things that in the past he's thought, “Well, I would want to do that, but…” Stuff like when we complain about merch. We shouldn’t be excited when women’s merch sells out the first day – that means that they did not plan ahead for how many people wanted it!
Lindsay: Thank you!
Sarah: Then when people want it they can’t buy it, and then later they say there’s not a lot of demand. Well, there was a lot of demand! You didn't sell as much because you didn’t have it. Things like that, that I’m not making excuses, but for Arnim and the Red Stars it was if we buy too much of this and then we don't sell it, then we have a loss on our hands because we have a bunch of merch sitting around that we didn’t sell, vs if we order it when it’s ordered it takes longer to get to people but we're only making what’s ordered, and then people don’t have their stuff in time. That stuff is frustrating for fans. So, stuff like that that just becomes much easier because you’ve got a safety net of a lot more money to fall back on, and that’s where I want the balance to be. Of course stay sustainable, make sure this grows at a rate that is something that we can promise for generations, that if you take your daughter now and your son now then he can take his kids…Versus, like, let’s make it so fancy and amazing and not think about how we're planning ahead.
Lindsay: Yeah. I love what you say about having these stakeholders in different industries feel invested, right? I think we are seeing more across maybe feminism at large, you know, however you define that, of people realizing the role that women's sports plays in that and how important that is, and that they can do something about it. I’ll never forget speaking to a group of lawyers in DC doing this panel, and I think everyone thought it was just gonna be kind of on the equal pay issue about women’s soccer. I of course got it off track and made it bigger, [laughter] and one of the things I ended up kind of preaching to them was, you know, you have this team here in DC – you know how men always take their clients to sporting events? Take your clients to the Mystics games and everything! And I had 30 of these people email me afterwards–
Sarah: I love that!
Lindsay: –saying that literally it had never even occurred to them and that they were gonna do that.
Sarah: That’s what I’ve been doing with all the people I know here in Chicago. I’m like, hey, first of all, sponsorships! Let's get into it.
Lindsay: Yes!
Sarah: And hey, let's think about if you had a suite, if you could take your clients here, and how many clients would think that was more interesting than doing the same old same old of going to a Cubs game. One of them, they have a lot of interior design and architect clients, and I’m like, think about all those people and maybe their families wanna come, and this is a better experience. Yeah, it's gotta be a part of people’s thinking. In order for it to be there it has to be in the spaces that they’re in, it has to be talked about. That comes back again to just awareness and publicity and PR, and that's another reason why it’s great to have people in all different businesses and fields. As much as I fear Angel City going and stealing all the players, because sounds like a fun place to play and hang out with Jennifer Garner and Billie Jean King and Serena and everybody else. I’m so grateful to them because you bring in all that…And that’s the other thing we always say about women's sports – they have to be cool. I think we infantilize them too often because the connection that people are willing to support is the inspiration for the next generation part, which is of course huge, but it’s also badass to watch right now!
Lindsay: Yeah. It doesn’t need to be the top line anymore. [laughs]
Sarah: And guess what kids want? Whatever older people like. So, you make it edgy and cool and badass for older people, adults and older kids, then the little ones want to get into what they’re into. We don’t have to market to children. We don’t have to only market to families, and we don’t have to make it pure and sweet all the time. We can make it edgy and badass and fierce and cool and all the things that make someone like Megan Rapinoe go from a soccer star to a worldwide superstar that everybody thinks is…I think I wrote this – she’s no longer aspirational, she’s instructional! I’m not just like, “I wanna be her.” I’m like, I’m gonna do what she’s doing! I’m gonna follow what she’s saying and putting out there, and I’m gonna make myself in the image of what she’s presenting.
I think we just don't do that enough in women’s sports, and I think the WNBA has done in recent years a much better job of talking about the players’ drip and talking about what the players are into in terms of music and all this stuff instead of just pictures of players with little girls. That’s great, but it also presents such a different vibe from the guy players that we all think are these cool wannabe personalities. We gotta do that with the women.
Lindsay: Yeah. I always say, their inherent existence is inspirational. What is inspirational is you investing in them, not you writing as your slogan “This is inspirational.” [laughter]
Sarah: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.
Lindsay: We don’t need to say that!
Sarah: Like the shero kind of…I think it’s not being called inspiration porn, just constantly using–
Lindsay: Yeah. That’s what I always call it.
Sarah: Yeah.
Lindsay: I forget what the last FIFA World Cup slogan was for the women, but I remember it was awful.
Sarah: Yeah. Honestly I’m not quite as cynical on that. I do think there are people that we wanna get to that are gonna come in through that door. That’s not the only door, so let’s, you know…
Lindsay: Yeah!
Sarah: I do think there’s this constant thin line of you don't wanna cheerlead for women’s sports where you then have one dimensional coverage where you never talk about the fights or the drama or the criticism or anything else, and that’s not as interesting as what we see draws interest in other places. But because there’s so much cynicism and misogyny around women’s sports you don't wanna be too critical because there’s plenty of people already doing that that aren't supportive! So, it’s finding that balance, and I think just making it cool, making it the way…And the US women’s national team is the perfect example. Everyone want to wear their jerseys, talk about them around the water cooler, ask people if they saw the game, go to watch parties. All that stuff is exactly what we want for…And you mentioned the Seattle Storm, like, can you get any cooler than Sue Bird? That's what we want.
Lindsay: You cannot! [laughs]
Sarah: You cannot! You cannot.
Lindsay: So, you’ve talked about coverage a lot, and this is where...I did see some criticism of this when you were announced, and I think some of it's legitimate. It’s a little bit of conflict of interest here, right? [laughs]
Sarah: Right.
Lindsay: I don't know if…I think we would criticize a male ESPN personality if they became a big owner of one of the men’s sports teams.
Sarah: Yeah.
Lindsay: So, I’m sure you saw that coming, you understand all this. So, how do you balance that? How did you handle this with ESPN? And kind of how are you going to walk this tightrope?
Sarah: Yeah, so one of the first things was go to ESPN to make sure this is okay. Know that there will always be a disclosure anytime the NWSL comes up, potentially even women's soccer. Now, this is brand new. I had already had a vacation scheduled for literally two days after this announcement, so I had a little bit of a break, so now I have to hunker down and re-establish contact with the folks and say where do we draw the lines – is it just NWSL? Is it US women’s national team? Is it whatever. But full disclosure of my co-ownership and the same with everything that leads the way with my journalism is fairness and accuracy. I saw someone point this out and I think it’s valid. I probably wouldn’t be allowed to do this with the NFL. But we have a major rights deal with the NFL. The NFL is the majority of our coverage, it’s a bulk of the time we spend. The NWSL is mostly talked about when I’m on a show telling people to watch the Red Stars, you know what I mean? [laughs] Of course that’s not true. There’s plenty of soccer folks at ESPN that direct coverage and interest to it, but it’s a really young league, so fair or not it’s just not the same conflict as if it were something that we have a deeply rooted investment in financially and also coverage-wise is gonna be the bulk across every platform I’m on. I completely understand people who wanna be critical of it. If I were a beat reporter in any capacity of any sport I think it would be pretty different. I’m not, right? I’m an opinion-giver, like I said, TV personality, which allows me to if I’m doing an E:60 story be very journalistic in my approach to it, and if I’m writing for ESPNW everything’s vetted, it’s gotta be all facts. But a lot of it is also opinion, that’s usually where I sit, is giving my opinion about facts and doing it in the most fair way that I think. I’m also never gonna make millions of dollars because I do it in a fair way. [laughter] You know what I mean?
Lindsay: Unfortunately I do, yeah!
Sarah: I think it’s pretty clear by now that I prioritize that over making people angry and driving up my paychecks by virtue of doing that stuff. So, if people don't wanna believe me they don't have to for sure. But I mean, I would suggest…I just had the commissioner of the NWSL on my podcast. I would suggest listening to it. I asked her about the anthem, I asked her why they haven't released more detail into Dell Loy Hansen and what went down in Utah – wouldn’t it be better to learn from it by being transparent and release it? I asked her about expansion, how do you not dilute the product? I’m not gonna change my job or who I am for this, but I think I can do even more in terms of supporting, growing, shining a light on and influencing this league from within than I can do by simply writing about it. So, for me that's worth it, and maybe I don't write a story about the Red Stars that I would do once a year where I would say, “Red Stars are hoping for an Olympic bump, and here’s what the owner says about their return from the World Cup, and here's how the percentage of sales…” Like, maybe that story doesn't happen but maybe I create a column called The Owner's Box or something! Actually I probably won’t use “box” because that phrasing…The Owner’s Suite or something like that! [laughter] You know, find a way to still give the commentary and thoughts that I have but make it very clear the perspective. That’s all stuff that I’m gonna figure out, and again, plenty of people, especially deep down journalists, are welcome to criticize. I didn’t go to journalism school. My work is always hovering between the fact that I wanna be on Saturday Night Live…My post-college education was completing the Second City conservatory while all of you were in journalism school! So, I do it all and I wanna do it all and this is part of that, and call me on it. Keep me honest.
Lindsay: Yeah. I love that. Like you said, it’s part of transparency, it’s part of disclosure, it’s part of…You know, you have to be open to criticism for it, and do it anyways if it's what you feel passionate about.
Sarah: Yeah, and I’m sure you know this, but it’s made me a better person to be a very on the internet person who speaks about things that matter to me because I can’t be a hypocrite, right? If I wanna say “Do X and Y” and then my behavior doesn’t match that, people can call me out, and there have been times when I’ve been like, “You know what? You're right.” I effed up or I didn’t say the right thing or I didn’t do that right and I'm still learning, and that’s made me be a better person because I’m constantly being checked – and I’m now checking myself before someone else can and saying, “Don’t say that!” or “Don't do that!” or “Don’t be a part of that,” whether it's something as dumb as fat-shaming James Harden or stuff that, like, that’s not who you are. Just because everyone else is doing it, like, hold yourself to a different standard for all these things. So, I want that for this too. I want people to keep doing that because, you know, who knows. All of my shares could start going to my head and all of a sudden I could start wearing a monocle and a top hat and pretending I don’t know all the lesser people, so I gotta make sure I don’t end up on a Jerry Jones yacht…
Lindsay: Well, we know you’re a billionaire already, Sarah. [laughs]
Sarah: Yeah, don't even throw that out there without context! [laughter]
Lindsay: There’s a group of trolls on the internet who are convinced that you’re married to a billionaire and that's the only version of your success.
Sarah: It's very sad, and sadly we’re not even close to billionaire. So, when I say we’re not people just think oh, they’re probably just like really rich but not officially billions. We’re not even close! [Lindsay laughs] We’re not even close to billionaires, and guess what? You don’t need to be close to a billionaire to be a part co-owner of an NWSL team. [laughs]
Lindsay: Right!
Sarah: You just have to be successful and have worked hard and be someone who they think will add value. Listen, here's the problem: I’m not gonna diminish hw hard I’ve worked for what I’ve earned so I can appease people who are bullshit anyway and don't care. So, I’m gonna tell you, I've worked very hard for the money that I have – and this was a very big investment for me, I’ve never invested in anything – but it is not a very big investment for plenty of other people who have shit tons of money. But I’m not gonna undersell how cool this is for me and how meaningful it was to be asked to be a part of it. But yeah, we’re not billionaires, sadly. I also do not have a 27 inch waist – I also think that’s important that people know, because that was in the same article. Also, I’m not 32.
Lindsay: Yeah. [laughs]
Sarah: But if you guys wanna share those more widely than you do that my husband's a billionaire, I would be fine not as often correcting those misunderstandings.
Lindsay: Oh, the internet is a fascinating place.
Sarah: It is.
Lindsay: Okay, final question. This is just kind of something…You know, if you’re not comfortable asking this, I know that you work for ESPN and so you respect it, but what would you like to see going forward? ESPN has so much power so it both gives so much coverage to women's sports compared to a lot of places, at the same time it's still a very small percentage of overall what they do. What do you think ESPN can do better going forward in terms of women's sports coverage?
Sarah: I think you set that up perfectly because there is a ton of women’s sports coverage but a lot of times it doesn't infiltrate the major properties that a lot of people are going to watch to see whether ESPN is covering women’s sports, right?
Lindsay: Right.
Sarah: They’re not gonna watch the hours of softball and women's basketball and everything else on our air. They’re not gonna read a lot of the ESPNW stories or they’re not gonna listen to the great podcasts. They’re gonna focus on whether First Take talked about it, and when First Take doesn't they’re gonna use that as a microcosm for the larger ESPN ethos on women's sports. I don't think that’s wholly unfair. I think that there needs to be a place on the platforms that are most watched. I think there needs to be a better diversity of coverage on those shows because sometimes the radio slate or the TV slate is the same things back to back to back, and especially on days when there isn’t anything interesting in men’s sports and they force something dumb.
I’ll tell you, I'm the first person on Around the Horn to be like, hey, you know what we should do instead of this? Let’s do the women’s final four, did you see this game? Or let’s do this player who set this record. I love Reali, the producers of Around the Horn, because they almost always are like, “You're right, that’s awesome, let's do it.” I don’t know if there are people in the spaces for some of the other shows pushing for that. I think it’s more interesting. I think that we’ve made very clear as ESPN that when we tell stories people find them interesting, right?
Lindsay: Right. [laughs]
Sarah: It's not let’s guess whether they’ll find them interesting and then not do it because we guessed wrong. Let’s give it to them. I always use this example, I’m like, you mother…Can I swear? I feel like I need to get this one out.
Lindsay: Oh, a hundred percent! [laughs]
Sarah: Okay. This felt like an important time to say: you motherfuckers watch little league world series and you get into it! And those are just little children playing baseball! And I love it too, but guess why you like it? Because we tell you who they are and we tell you the stakes and we give you their stories, and then we put it on and we tell you it’s important, and then you guys think it’s important too. Guess what? You would do the same shit for women’s sports if we told you the stories and the stakes and we gave you the time and we told you it was important. So, whenever anyone says, “Well, it’s not the best version of it,” I’m like, you watch 10 year olds play!
Lindsay: Also, the world series of poker!
Sarah: Right, yeah.
Lindsay: ESPN invented that market! [laughs]
Sarah: Yeah. Like, we’re really good at tell you here’s something you should be interested in, and then you guys being like, “You’re right, it is interesting!” So, let’s do that with the other stuff and let’s not keep it so surface level that it's only when a player does something wrong, which is usually when it makes the news, right? It’s either when they have to make the biggest thing in the history of the world, like, “Oh they won the World Cup, let's talk about it for five minutes,” or it has to be a domestic violence arrest or something like that, right? There’s a lot of middle ground, but so much of that too is the more coverage – and your newsletter and other people who are working in this space are helping because you gotta have things to talk about, and if you don't know things…
Listen, I’ll tell you, there are people at ESPN that I called out for Sabrina “Eye-oh-nescu” and I’m like, dude! You should've known it after the second game. Now, to be fair, there’s plenty of people who say plenty of NBA names wrong too, and I’m like, it’s Dennis Schröder not “Shrow-der!” You’re an NBA analyst, so I think you should know that! But with Sabrina it's like, you just tell yourself the very first time you hear Ionescu that that’s how you say it, and then you make yourself remember it so that when you talk about her you give her respect because what she’s doing is incredible.
And if you don’t, then you've made it clear that you don't think that’s important for you job, but we're expected to know every little detail of everything. So, put the work in. Guess what? Then you’ll have the stories to tell. I love Adam, I mean, he's called a ton of women’s sports but now he’s calling Bulls games and the other night they were talking about Zach LaVine had a good chance, and I wanna say it was like 50-40-20 but I can’t remember the exact stat, it's something that Elena Delle Donne did a couple of years ago, the only woman ever–
Lindsay: 50-40-90, yeah.
Sarah: 50-40-90, that’s it, for free throws. In the middle of this graphic it’s all NBA players, and he said Zach would be the first one if he kept on this pace since yada yada, but Elena Delle Donne did it a couple of years ago in the WNBA, the first woman. He knew it off the top of his head, it wasn't on the graphic, just something he knew from being in that world, and he brought it to the table because she was deserving of that mention. That’s all you want, right? The same way that people do know enough about, say, UConn women's basketball, to occasionally make a comparison. “Oh, this feels like when the UConn women's basketball team was so dominant that we couldn’t decide whether it was bad for the game or good for the game. They’ll use that to talk about a men's sport, and you’re like, we need more of that where we respect it from this place to this place, and that requires work. Listen, I will admit, it’s hard to keep up with everything, it really is.
Lindsay: Oh my god…
Sarah: It’s really hard to know all the things. But if you wanna talk about something you put in a little work and you bring something to the table, make it interesting. And that’s where I think they can improve. I think the depth of coverage, the breadth, is pretty good. It's really good compared to everywhere else, and it could still be more. But it’s hitting those major big shows that everyone kind of keeps tabs on and making them better.
Lindsay: It's that cool factor, right?
Sarah: Yeah.
Lindsay: That once again. Sometimes I’ll monitor these just because I think accountability helps sometimes, right?
Sarah: Yeah, for sure.
Lindsay: When you can point and you can say we looked at your topics for a full week, right, and you did 10 topics on Tom Brady’s tweets and 1 on a women’s sport, right? [laughs]
Sarah: I love it when you do that, because I’m not in charge, I’m just like you, I’m just the one who nags people. [laughs]
Lindsay: I’ve heard it helps behind the scenes occasionally for people who are advocating. But yeah, I mean, it’s so good and I have to say that I’ve noticed the work that you’ve been putting out–
Sarah: Thank you.
Lindsay: –to educate yourself and to use your platform to communicate and to just naturally do it, and I see others…I see Clinton Yates, of course I see…I think Around the Horn is probably one of the best examples of including women’s sports in the conversation, just not as a charity or as a special segment.
Sarah: Yeah, yeah.
Lindsay: But as sports!
Sarah: Yeah, because it is. [laughs]
Lindsay: It’s sports. [laughs] But Sarah, thank you so much for being on Burn It All Down, it was way overdue. We’re just so excited for this opportunity for you and just for, you know, what we talk a lot about – going forward and ownership in women’s sports, and this is an exciting model, I think.
Sarah: I think so too. Gotta get you guys out to a game – a Burn It All Down road trip when the world is slightly back to normal.
Lindsay: Gosh, I cannot…I just wanna go everywhere! [laughs]
Sarah: Ditto!
Lindsay: And hug everyone! I’m not even a big hugger, but just…[laughs] It’s gonna be great. Alright, thanks so much, Sarah.
Sarah: Thanks for having me.
Lindsay: Where can everyone follow you on Twitter?
Sarah: @SarahSpain – Sarah with an H, Spain like the country. Then Instagram is @spain2323.
Lindsay: Awesome. Thanks again.
Sarah: Thanks guys.