Parker Graham joins us now.
He is the founder and CEO of Vestibule, a sports investment platform where fans or honestly investors can put money into athletes or teams.
Parker, it's nice to have you here.
So talk to me about investing in specifically mid-market football clubs across Europe.
How do you make that process more accessible to retail investors?
Yeah, JD, it's, uh, it's really the best part of the market right now, in my opinion.
You see so much private equity money is going into sports, whether it's here in the States or in Europe, and it's really focused and concentrated at the, at the top of, at the top leagues, right?
I think La Liga, um, the English Premier League, and it's left this giant opportunity in the middle market with tier 2, tier 3 teams in multiple countries that they just have the right.
Capital infrastructure, you'd be able to make a lot of money and a lot of returns for investors.
Today there's just not really a whole lot of access points to get money into those markets and so we saw this massive opportunity for Festival to be the market maker in those spaces, bring the, the capital from not only just retail but also institutional buyers as well, and create an ecosystem where anyone can participate in sports ownership across the globe.
Seems like you got some big name athletes helping you at least on the investment side.
What more can you tell us there and how did those relationships come about?
Uh, JD, you know, being a former pro athlete myself, I've got access to incredible investors that played in the NFL, the NBA, and the MLB and really across the entire stack.
And when I started talking about what we were building at Festival and this whole idea about earning equity and, and building equity versus just being a player, really spoke to the athletes that I've got uh in my in my network, excuse me.
And again, once I start telling that story, one person tells another person, and we actually just launched and revealed our first two athletes that have joined us as big key pillar investors in the KSB and uh that is both uh Trey Boston and Jay Jackson.
We've got a lot more behind them, and not only this deal, but every deal that we have on deck for this year.
Sports wagering is everywhere, not to mention the role of prediction markets aside from traditional sports gambling.
How do you compete for the attention of fans?
Uh, you know, the good thing about sports investing from my perspective is that, you know, a lot of people lose quite a bit.
That's kind of how those businesses are built and everyone's experienced that parlor that didn't work out or that investment or that, uh, uh, bet that just didn't really go your way.
And I think the more people That experience that, the more likely they are to try investing.
A lot of individuals in America, um, are investing.
They have a 401k, they have an IRA, and we're really trying to bridge that gap of you can have just as much, you know, short-term gratification doing things on the investment front as you can, you know, and gambling with your buddies on Saturday.
I've got about 30 seconds left.
How does regulation impact your would-be ability to scale globally?
That's a great question, a very loaded question, JD, but I think for us, we're very blessed in the sense that the regulation that we use, which is regulation A here in the US, is a really, really broad-based, uh, gives us a really broad-based ability to work with all kinds of clubs across the world, especially when we're focused here, um, with US-based investors and folks that just really have.
Haven't had access to invest in these assets all over the world.
As regulations continue to change, we'll continue to move with them, and I think honestly, this is really the first phase of our company.
I think you'll see us go from our current regulation and possibly getting into different ones so we can grow the company to be as big as possible, maybe even as big as the New York Stock Exchange one day.
Parker, I know you are as excited as I am for tonight's NFL draft.
We'll have to link up after and uh see how things fall.
Parker Graham, founder and CEO of Vestable, my man, you're welcome back anytime.
Nice to see you.
