The Business of Sports with Rick Horrow

Sports goes to Riccaro inside the $1.3 trillion dollar business of sports, and you're on the record with the intersection of the finest training in the world with the finest intentions and the finest minds in the world.

We bring it all together after an amazing graduation ceremony, full disclosure.

I was the keynote speaker.

They couldn't find anybody better at RPS academies and had a wonderful class of world-class athletes and minds graduate all over the country and the world they come from.

They're ready to do the world's bidding and knock them dead all over the country.

And the reason for it is the CEO and founder of RPS Academies, Gabe Harmilo.

Hey, how are you doing?

Where are you?

Greg, it's a pleasure to see you.

I'm here.

I'm at home right here enjoying the view of the beautiful golf course.

And now that you mentioned the graduation, uh, your speech was so, I mean, the, the kids still talking about it, so very appreciative that you were able to do that for us.

Well, I do appreciate that.

Obviously you couldn't find anybody better, but it was an honor for me to provide some perspective.

To these kids, we'll get back to these kids in a minute, but first I want to focus on you.

From 1981 to 2009, you were the tennis director of Bollettieri, IMG, basically Mark McCormick's right tennis hand.

Talk about that.

It was a very beautiful experience actually.

Uh, Mark McCormick was very involved.

He was very supportive, and he knew that, uh, tennis was a big sport, and when we started the academy, we always provided the most income to the, to the whole place.

So, and he loved playing tennis.

And every time he came to the academy, we had to set up matches for him.

So that was fun.

And as for me as a, as a coach, being the director of at that time, the best academy in the world.

Because we were extremely successful.

That was something that uh is incredible.

I mean, we produced so many world champions that nobody will ever repeat that, that, that we did, nobody.

That's, that's how strong and how big we were and I'm very confident to say that that's something that nobody will ever repeat.

Well, I'm, I'm pretty sure of that and just listen to the names.

I'll do it and then you can embellish. uh Agassi, Courier, uh Mary Pierce, Sharapova, uh Sela, Nishikori, who is like Japan's famous, the premier second Nishikori first, and on and on, 11 #1, 27 top 10 and WTA champions.

Uh, what did, what was your special sauce?

Why did they like you so much?

I think uh the methodology was very strong.

I had a very good background in sports.

My mother was an Olympic swimming coach, so I took a lot from, from that.

I swimming is very advanced, swimming is a, is a very scientific sport, the way they train.

So starting with the periodization, which is a planning method, nobody used to have periodization.

I was the one who started the periodization, and it's because I saw it, you know, working with my brother, which he was an Olympic swimmer.

And all the other athletes that my mother trained, so I tried to have the same uh correlation to tennis and it worked extremely well.

So, the methodology was something that we pay a lot of attention to, and if you look at our players, methodology, people think it's only strokes, but methodology is everything.

Mythology is, is tactics and strategy.

So all our players played on top of the line, no backing up, aggressive tennis, and none of that.

There are agaruguera, hitting the ball up high.

Everything was.

You know, on your face.

And the other part that the methodology that is very important is we always uh talk to the students about the importance of believing in themselves.

And you saw the match yesterday, for example, you know, the, the the, I mean, and the French Open, if you look at Alcaraz.

You know, senior, extremely good match, but I can ask, and at the end of the match, at the very, very end, somebody asked him a question, how come he was able to fight?

How come he was able to go for those shots at the right moment?

And he said, because one, very simple, because I believe in myself.

I, I believe in myself and, and to me that's the key for everything you do in life.

If you believe in yourself, you're one step ahead.

So that's part of the methodology that I always try to tell the students.

For example, when they come to the academy, the first question that I ask them is, what is your dream?

No, what are you going to accomplish?

What is your goal?

No, no, no.

What is your dream?

And all those guys that you mentioned Agai Coo with on samras, the first thing they said was, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be number one in the world.

No, uh, well, no, no, I'm going to be it was like an affirmation, you know, that's how much they believe in themselves.

And every time I ask them, you, you, you know what that means?

Do you know what it takes to be number one in the world?

I run away without hesitation, a lot of work, sacrifice, and when I told them, you understand sacrifice?

And this is, for example, you know.

Monica Celes, for example, when she came to the academy, she was uh her parents, she was by herself, and she was saying, I'm here by myself, away from my family, away from my food, away, you know, this is very hard.

I'm, I'm here.

I cry every night, every night, and they just to show that there were kids, they were little kids, but they knew that they were sacrificing because they were reaching for that dream.

How much of this is ground strokes, SERS, etc. and how much is psychology and ego management?

I always say that the there's a good, a good point.

I, I always say that uh the ability, the, you know, when, when somebody has You know, to have, to have what it takes, you, you need both, because you need to be very skillful.

But at the same time, you need to have the mindset to know that, uh, you're gonna get there.

Because I have a lot of players that come with beautiful strokes, but they, they don't know how to play tennis.

I mean, they don't know, they don't have the ability, the, the, the mental skills to be able to anticipate the shot, for example, of the opponent.

And what I remember with all these Agasior, we took all of them since they were very young, you know, they had a lot of talent, but at the same time, they had a lot of potential.

And I think people tend to mix the two.

The thing is they are the same, talent and potential, and they're two different things.

I know a lot of very talented players, but they have the potential.

You know, and to me potential sometimes is a lot more important than the talent.

Now, you need both and you need talent because I could be a very good coach.

But if you give me a player with no talent, it's nothing I can do.

I don't, I don't, I don't do magic.

But if you give me a player that has talent and a little bit of potential, I can take them as far, as far as, as they want to go.

You push the envelope for confidence.

Here's a quote from your material.

I don't train champions, I make them.

That's a pretty darn important statement.

If you can't back it up, you can back it up.

That is right.

But at the same time, like I was saying, I believed in myself.

I knew I could do it.

When I stepped in that position, I knew I could make champions, and I knew that was a, I was born to, to make champions.

And some people call me cocky and some people say that I'm very arrogant, but it's another thing.

But when I have the players in front of me, no matter what age, you know, if they don't have that arrogance, they don't have that belief themselves, they don't have a chance because tennis is, is very hard.

Tennis is a very difficult sport.

It's a one on one, very competitive.

And then to be able to survive the high performance, you have to have the arrogance.

Arrogance that it doesn't mean to be disrespectful to the press or, you know, arrogance means it really is believing in yourself 100%.

And that's what it takes to be a coach, that's what it takes to be a player, and that's what it takes to be a champion in life.

So all of these players have, and you can research them all.

I know you know all of their histories in every detail.

But they've all experienced some degree of failure throughout their career, and they bounced back to be resounding successes, Hall of Famers, amazing business people.

What's the secret of resilience?

It's not exceeding in the peak.

It's exceeding in the valley to get up after you're hit.

And how do you teach these folks with sometimes large, maybe fragile egos, that when you're hit, you got to get up quickly and then you got to succeed.

That, that's, when we define a champion, if people think champion is the one that wins the medals or win the trophies, but what I define champions is the players that they have the dream, they work hard to get the dream, and when they fall, they're gonna get up again.

I wanna be is the one that when they fall, they start looking for excuses.

They start looking back to see what they can do back.

You know, when I look for champions is somebody that Falls down and they get up and then you keep looking forward.

If you, if you look at Agassi, I mean, he dropped to 300 in the world and he came back to be number one in the world, and he had to play all the small tournaments.

He had to pick up his own balls.

He had to call his own lines on the court after being number one in the world, you know, now somebody else, it would be very difficult to go to that route, but this is a champion.

When he was down, he told me, I'll make it again and I'm gonna make it on my own.

And that's what he did.

That you were saying that's what champions do.

Champions have that resilience, you know, to go back, back up again and do it again.

You worked with Bollettieri and IMG and the academy for 26 straight years, which is a little bit of ego management, by the way, not just for the players, but all those folks around you as well.

You succeeded, formula for success.

Given that perspective, was it harder basically to train 1980s and 1990s athletes than it is today?

Very different.

And I think the difference is in the, I, I think the mindset of the students today is a little bit different.

At the same time, I think some of the rules, for example, the USDA or the NCAA looking for the UTR, you know, I'm very, very, uh, opposed to the UTR because they say it's not a ranking, it's a rating, but it's semantics.

At the end it's the same thing.

So you see players talented, and you see players with very good strokes, tactically sound.

And when they go play a match and the match gets tight, they don't want to lose to a player that is lesser than them because the, the UTR will go down.

So then they start pushing and they start hitting the slices and they start, you know, doing completely different what we trained for.

So to me, that's something that uh it has in a way, taken a, a life away from American tennis.

And that those are the students that are, you know, nobody asking what is your ranking.

Everybody asking what is your UTR?

And I bet you everybody that you ask a tennis player, they know the UTR to the little, little decimal point.

And that that's how important that to me is, that's not important because when they play, they should be able to play knowing that what they're doing that day is gonna help them.

Improve their tennis.

They are investing in their game.

I'll give you an example.

I, I guess he was playing, he was 14 years old, was playing nationals.

I was missing the ball by inches.

So when they change over, I go under him and big, big targets, and he turns around and he goes, Don't worry, that that's the way I'm gonna be #1 in the world.

And he was a kid, and he was teaching me a lesson because as a coach, I was telling big margins, he was telling, no, no, let me hit.

Sure enough, he lost the match, but he, he was very happy.

He said, I did what I was supposed to do.

I'm invested in my game.

I was young.

I was like 26, 27.

So, you know, a little kid was teaching me a lesson that had me for the rest of my life.

You see sinner, you see Alcaraz, you see these guys taking over for Djokovic, the big three.

Do those guys possess that fortitude that Agassi and those others 30 years ago did?

I think so, especially those two, they're so farther ahead than any anybody else in the, in the tour.

But it, it's a difference because the quality of the ball is a lot higher.

If you look at the, at the speed of the ball, the speed of the ball, the, the velocity of the serves, they're more complete, I mean, the, the, these two are, are, are really, really good.

And uh the difference is that Agassi we don't know those guys were able to stay in the tour for a long time.

Uh, you look at Djokovic, I mean, he really took care of his body and he lasted a long time.

That's what he's the goat.

Now, past tense, don't, hey, don't do past tense with that guy, man.

He's still around, right?

He's very good.

He's, he's very impressive.

That, that, that's the sad part about tennis.

He loses in the semifinals and he lost.

He loses in the, in the finals and he loses.

But, but he is an inspiration for a lot of people.

He, what he, what he did and what he has done is incredible for the sport.

Yeah.

Let's talk business for a minute, then we'll talk your academies and your passion.

Um, what is the biggest change in the business of tennis broadly defined today versus, let's say 2030 years ago?

Uh, when we say the academy, we're the first academy.

It was nobody else.

Right now there are a million academies.

Now, the difference too is that before an academy was really an academy, an academy, we, we had the school inside, we had our conditioning, we have our trainers, but today, anybody, for example, a coach leaves the academy, buys a, a van, puts, uh, Gomez or uh Pietri or whoever's name on this ban, and that's an academy, and that's not an academy, that's a program.

Now the difference for us is that we have a lot of expenses because we have to carry the expenses of the people that take care of the students.

We have to take care of the expenses of all the coaches.

Meanwhile 72 people on staff, so that is very expensive, you know, a little program that supposedly want to be academies, and they probably have 56 coaches and then.

You know, this is very different now.

The, the business in the past also was very, uh, especially signing place, for example.

It was a handshake, you know, you had a handshake that that was it.

The contract was done with a handshake and, and that agreement was done, and they believe in that agreement and they supported and they honored the agreement.

Today it's been very difficult.

I mean, somebody, you know, writes or shakes and even with a reading contract, they, they find a way to break it.

So even for companies like, like yours, for example, that you, you have, you know, a lot of players that you represent, it's been a little it's been more complicated.

And for us as an academy too because we invest a lot of money in the players because we're giving the scholarships, the very talented players, but knowing that at the end, we don't know if they're gonna be loyal or not.

When I, when I was in 9G and Boqueri, those kids were loyal to us to the very end.

Yeah, and they'll continue to be because you did it differently.

So let's let's uh let's uh uh segue to the academies for a few minutes.

Your mission statement is unlike anything we, we've seen, and let me just quickly read it.

Transform children into champions. in life dedicated training and investment in our students.

We aim to maximize their intellectual, academic, athletic potential, three pillars.

Talk about that a little bit and how it's shaped RPS.

Uh, one of the things that, uh, You know, the biggest investors that we have in his mind, the most important thing is the students have to be champions for life, which we all know.

Well, once, I think when you, you practice a sport, you have value.

The values that sports teaches you honesty, and discipline, perseverance.

The yes of those three.

There are more values, but yes, those three can help anybody succeed in life in whatever they do.

So we're making sure that those values are very, very strong and that the, the students understand that, that, that is what they are all about.

And at the same time, in the, the, the three pillars, academics, we will pay a lot of attention that our students are very well prepared.

So if they go to college, you know, we want to go to Harvard, Princeton, MIT, you know, that, that's our goal, that they go to the best possible, you know, and so far we've done a very good job with that, and we keep improving our, our academics daily.

The, the other pillar that is important is the intellect.

And with that is something that I would love to do with you, which is the debate because it's part of the intellect.

We wanna do the debate, we wanna do uh uh gaming, we wanna do uh You know, so many things that we wanna do, you know, and then the intellect in the intellectual part to make sure that they, they evolve, not just that they are athletes, but that also they are they are the complete package, you know, that's what we wanna do.

And in sports, high performance is is everything from the, in tennis, for example, every ball they touch has to have a tactical intention, you know, that, that's the key.

These are the best, these are the best athletes in the world whose parents trust you to not only make them better athletically, but make them better academically in a cultural situation after seeing the graduation, like none other.

When you look at your numbers, it's PK through 12.

But also your student-teacher ratio, 8 to 1.

I, I've never seen 8 to 1.

And the 100% go to a four-year college, uh, it's an incredible success story, especially in these days of empowered, enlightened, up and out, uh, I want tomorrow athletes.

And that is so true because the uh everything today is the one, they want results today.

And you you know how it is, the high performance is one step at a time.

It you cannot jump from 1 to 3.

It is you have to go 121 at a time.

And that's a part that uh we put a lot of emphasis when we talk to students from the very beginning.

They need to understand that, that they have to be patient, that they have to believe in the system, that they have to believe in, you know, what we know and how we're gonna take them.

To exactly who they want to be.

And one thing that we is pressure for us is because like you're saying, we know the parents are putting their responsibility on us because they believe in our program, because they believe in our coaches.

So for us, we know that we have to deliver, and we have to deliver at the best of our ability because as, you know, we have to trust those fars who trust us, we have to make sure that we deliver at 100%.

Now your core is tennis, golf, volleyball, and soccer, but the expansion plans and these kind of secondary, not secondary because they're, you know, tackle it with a priority like you do everything else lacrosse, field hockey, swimming, women's soccer, debate, that is big.

We're going to talk about debate and sports, but talk a little bit about your facility and your program expansion plans.

Uh, we, we're expanding rapidly.

Right now, we are, uh, finishing the building of the school, you know, so basically everything is inside and everything that is part of the academy belongs to us.

All the land, all the real estate belongs to us, because before we used to basically rent.

So that will give us uh more authority on what to do.

Uh, this is a big, uh, it's a big operation.

That the, the all the sports that are gonna come into play, I think they have, we have a lot of room for expansion.

To me, swimming is very big because I've been around swimming for a long time.

Field hockey is another one that is very big um up north and I think northeast, and I think is coming out to Florida rapidly because of the weather and they, they wanna be able to compete and they be able, they wanna be able to, to have more matches.

And, and women's soccer to me is a no brainer.

I mean, the best.

Soccer players in the world, female players are Americans, and we have very good coaches, very talented girls that are playing soccer from very young ages.

So it's something that we're gonna start this year, we're gonna start, you know, women's uh women's soccer.

Do you think, um, and we talked about debate, hey, pickleball too, let's not forget pickleball.

That that's, that's there for whether we like it or not, it's there and it's a big deal.

And we, we talked about debate.

So your expansion plans obviously include the physical plan as well as the programming plant as well.

And we know that you're in the middle of a, of a, of a growing county of the tre.

Coast from Miami, St.

Lucie County, and in the, in the state of Florida.

Do we think that the state of Florida and Saint Lucie County fully appreciate at this point the big tourism, economic, tax, uh, family impact today and the future that you have on, on, on, on these localities?

Uh, another thing that I forgot is we're building 22 more courts.

We're building 2 stadium courts.

We're building 3 indoor courts, so we keep building and we, we keep, you know, the facility is getting bigger and better.

And when you, when we talk about the city like right now we have the money to start building those tennis courts today, but the city takes a long time to, to basically approve all those plans, uh.

I, I hope they understand what we do for the city.

There are a lot of cities that want us.

I remember when we were in Casa Grande, Arizona, that the government was basically putting the money for us to be, to repay the money in 100 years.

Uh, the, there are a lot of counties don't understand, you know, what IMG for example, has done for Burlington, Florida, what other big academies have done for the, for the area, and for us it's the same.

You know, we have, in tennis, we have half of our students and non boards and the parents have board houses around here and I think there's one or two American parents, the rest of them are foreigners, and they come and buy big houses, big real estate, and they basically invested in the community.

So we're not only providing more money like every week when these students go out, these students have their resources.

So when they go to the mall, I mean they go to buy, and then when they go to a restaurant, they go to the best restaurants, and this is every weekend, weekend after weekend, and when the parents come to visit, it's the same.

These parents, when they come, they don't take their son or daughter to dinner or to lunch.

They take all their friends.

So when they go to lunch or dinner, it's a table of 12 people.

You know, to the best restaurants in town, so they contribute, contribute also with taxes.

They will pay a lot of taxes and they're contributing a lot, you know, to the city.

I'm just hoping that they understand the value that we have.

I will tell you this that that soapbox a little bit I've been involved in.

It's about $22 billion worth of public money for facilities and events that are guaranteed far less impactful than yours.

So here's hoping that they do get the message and we're right there for you with that message.

One more business question, NIL expectation of dollars from college, is that screwing you up?

And actually, I agree with it because a lot of the players when they go play college, basically they're playing for free.

And one thing that we always tell the students is not to do anything for free.

That's something that we put in their minds from the very beginning just to teach them their value.

When they want to do something like that, for example, the social media, we have to make sure the social media is clean, they don't have any stupid stuff in social media.

And if by any chance, you know, because sometimes they wanna be cute and they wanna say that they have the best racket in the world.

I always ask them, OK, how much are they paying you to use that racket, you know, so what do you advertise for that racket?

You know, so they learned that that they have a value and uh it's becoming stronger and stronger.

I think that's, I think for sports in general, you know, especially if it's American football or, or basketball that so many people watch, you know, on TV and You know, I, I think it's great that these athletes, you know, get paid since they're young because, I mean, they're earning the money.

They're earning.

I mean, it's very hard to go to school and study the hours that they have to study, and then they have to train.

And most of them, they do it in the morning, they train in the morning, they go to school, they go in the afternoon, they train, they go to school, and the weekends, they play in tournaments.

It's very difficult.

This is a very sacrificed life and usually when they leave college, they don't have a penny.

And, uh, a lot of them, they don't have full scholarships.

Some of them have a partial scholarship, and when they leave college, they have to pay for that scholarship.

But in the meantime, they're getting paid for what what they're doing, you know, I, I think it's, yeah, it's very good.

Final question, where is Gabe Jamio and RBS 10 years from now?

My, my dream is to have the best academy in the world.

That's my dream.

It's not right now it's not so much about making the next number one in the world.

I wanna make the next number one academy in the world.

And I wanted to make sure that it's sustainable, that we're gonna be in business for a long time, that we're able to provide for students that wanna be champions.

Um, that's the way we wanna make champions.

Well, look, the industry and kids, they're in great hands with you and the academy.

I'm lucky enough to be around the corner from you all. nothing but great things.

It's an amazing institution.

We'll only get better.

Sportsfeor Riccaro, Speak with you soon.