Podcast Alert: Donn Davis – PFL

Transcript

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Donn Davis: [00:00:00] This sport and this business is just starting. Remember that business curve we all learned in college about high growth maturity? All other sports are out of their growth period. Basketball, soccer, baseball, football, they’re through their high growth period. But at just 25 to 30 years old, MMA is just starting. New entrants, high growth, that period. So I said, “Huh, there is room for a new opportunity here because there won’t be just one.” 

AJ Maestas: Welcome to the Navigating Sports Business Podcast, where we uncover insights from the most prominent leaders in our industry. Today, I’m happy to be joined by Donn Davis, founder and chairman of the Professional Fighters League, the PFL. He’s a venture capitalist, a board member 20 times over, and so much more that I’m really excited to get it into this with you, Donn, so thank you for joining us. 

Donn Davis: AJ, great to be here. 

AJ Maestas: All right. Yeah. Let’s start with the PFL. You founded a league not something people do too often. So what was the [00:01:00] impetus? How did this even happen? 

Donn Davis: The idea came to me the day that UFC sold. I was minding my own business running our venture capital firm, Revolution, and there were three things that hit me that day as I set everything aside, as you sometimes do when you get excited by something. And I said, “Huh, 650 million MMA fans, third biggest fan base in the world.” 

I had no idea, thought it was a niche sport. It’s really an emerging major sport. Second thing, underserved. There’s only 50 UFC events at the time. Think of the number one sport, soccer, 4,000 soccer matches. Number two sport, basketball, 2,000 basketball games. So you’re telling me there’s 650 million fans, have 50 premium fights, really underserved. 

And the last thing is, this sport and this business is just starting. Remember that business curve we all learned in college about high growth maturity? All other sports are out of their growth period. Basketball, soccer, baseball, football, they’re through their high growth period. But at just 25 to [00:02:00] 30 years old, MMA is just starting. New entrants, high growth, that period. So I said, “Huh, there is room for a new opportunity here because there won’t be just one.” 

AJ Maestas: That’s interesting. You know what? I appreciate you framing it that way. We had the founder of ONE Championship, on the podcast maybe a year or two ago, and he shared a bunch of big numbers, huge numbers, and he was framing the ONE Championship versus, Formula 1 and to your point, the biggest events in sports. 

So help me get all this stuff right because the true story I don’t even remember. Third most popular sport, how are we measuring that? Is that based… and then if you don’t mind framing the PFL versus ONE Championship, just listeners can get a feel for it. 

Donn Davis: Yeah, absolutely. I think the thing that’s very interesting about MMA is it’s not PFL versus UFC or any other company. It’s not Coke versus Pepsi. Come back to that very underserved. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of fans, very few premium events. So whether you’re a fan, a [00:03:00] media partner, or a commercial sponsor, you either want more or you’re locked out of the UFC or priced out. 

So it’s not PFL versus UFC. Think of it as soccer. There’s nine major soccer leagues in the world. MLS in the United States is the smallest of the nine, Premier League is the largest. There’s seven in between. So it’s not us versus them. Then the second point is to call it dimensionalize this for a minute. There’s two big metrics in sports, whether it’s the PFL in MMA or the NBA. One is athlete quality, two is called viewership, how many people on linear and streaming, watching on some form of TV, cause that’s the only way you get paid in sports. That’s 60% of all revenue in all major sports leagues. 

So number one, athlete quality. There’s one group that ranks all fighters in the world. It’s called Fight Matrix. They’re independent agency. Of course, Don King would rank all his boxers the best. Dana would rank all his MMA. Sure. I would rank all my fighters the best, but that’s an independent third party. 

Of the top 300 fighters in the world at MMA, [00:04:00] UFC has two-thirds, PFL has one-third, and one championship has single digits, about eight fighters. Okay. So we have about 85, UFC has about 200. So when you look at athlete quality, that’s everything. Now, when you start to think about the other big four, NFL, XFL, it’s 100% zero. 

If you look at MLS, they have one, Messi, of the top 300 soccer players. So what’s very misunderstood about MMA is when you look at athlete quality, that’s everything for the fan or the product, and that’s where PFL and UFC, only two premium companies in the world. And then the second measure I mentioned is that real audience. 

How many people are watching on, quote, TV, linear streaming regardless of device? UFC does about 8 million per event. PFL does about 2 million per event. Both those are global numbers. So we’re about 25% of their viewership, and we don’t have a lot of promotion. You get that UFC [00:05:00] brand everywhere. You don’t see that PFL promoted everywhere. So they’re 33 years old. We’re seven years old. We’re already 25% of the audience. One championship is about 5% of that. 

AJ Maestas: Couple more things about the PFL, just our listeners can understand it better. The end game here. We all saw that billion-dollar television deal. Private equity money’s been all over UFC. So what’s the end game here? You’re not necessarily a lifer, so there’s an exit coming, I take it, or does it roll up, or what happens here? 

Donn Davis: Yeah. All companies and all businesses have two phases You build value, and then you deliver value to your investors or shareholders. There’s only two phases. 

And PFL is in the build value phase, and then we will get into the deliver value phase to our investors and shareholders. UFC’s done that fantastic. They’ve gone from 4 billion value to 20 billion value. Think of that, and everybody said at 4 billion, “Endeavor overpaid.” 

AJ Maestas: Yeah, I remember. Yeah. 

Donn Davis: Endeavor overpaid. [00:06:00] So this game is just starting in MMA in terms of value creation for, I believe, UFC and certainly for PFL. Our last round valued our company about 800 million, and some of the other metrics I talked about shows that we have the foundation and the product with our new leader, John Martin, to commercialize at a much more rapid scale. 

So I think you’ll see us in, call it this next chapter, really start to build even more value. 

AJ Maestas: I wanna talk about a bunch of M&A, and I know you serve on so many boards. But before we move off of, mixed martial arts here we did a little work for Bellator way back in the day, and I know there’s some, you could argue good or bad. We had a bad experience with them. But if you don’t mind sharing, cause I always think it’s… I know when I’m listening to people at a conference or something, I really wanna hear, I don’t wanna hear about all the perfect stuff. You’ve made a lot of money. Your life’s gone incredibly well. 

It would be so fun to hear about something that didn’t go perfect. I believe Bellator might be one of those, right? 

Donn Davis: Look, I could do a whole podcast with you on lessons learned. Yeah. From age 25 to [00:07:00] 62. Bellator’s very interesting. And I’ve been pretty open about this, and, sometimes the MMA community is less forgiving about this. Bellator we did for one reason, to acquire the fighter roster. Their business, candidly, had failed under Paramount. At one point I believe it was successful many years ago. Audience was good, monetization was good, but their monetization and audience had really deteriorated under, call it, corporate ownership of Paramount. 

But their fighter roster was tremendous. Those fighter roster statistics I outlined earlier, they more than doubled those for us. We acquired an unbelievable fighter roster with Bellator. That’s the reason we did it. And to be transparent, we gave away 5% of stock of the company and no cash. So we acquired their entire business for very little. 

Now, what did not go well? We did some research, and it seemed like the Bellator brand was still strong. Our instincts were the PFL brand was the brand [00:08:00] of the future, and the Bellator brand was a brand of… that was our instincts. But we looked at some data, and the data told us the Bellator brand maybe was still strong, particularly overseas. 

So we stayed with the Bellator brand and did not incorporate everything into PFL. I don’t wanna be right, I wanna win, so we said, “okay, that’s what the data’s telling us.” No. Our instincts were right. That data was wrong. The Bellator brand was weak, and it was a brand of the past. There was no commercial interest in it. 

There was very little fan interest in it. A lot of maybe MMA reporter interest, MMA Reddit interest, but not real interest. The PFL brand was way stronger. So we spent a year with a second brand out there. It resulted in some confusion in the market, both from fans and media. So I would call it strategy, check, execution, X. 

AJ Maestas: Interesting. That’s interesting. I’m sorry to hear that, but you have no regrets because there’s essentially a duopoly on talent right now between… 

Donn Davis: That’s right. [00:09:00] Yeah. At the end of the day, it’s exactly where it ended up. If you rewind the clock to three years ago, there were three sixth graders on the playground arguing who was number two. 

Bellator, PFL, and ONE Championship. And that’s over, when you look at the key metrics. And And we did not pay a big price for that, but we did pay some momentum and some churn, and you never like that in a business. We had a lot of momentum and a lot of great reputation in the market, and I don’t like that year of churn that we went through. And that’s on us, and we learn from that. 

AJ Maestas: Right. I like that attitude. And just for my own, edification and for folks listening too, right? Buying some of the equity versus cash from an investor’s perspective, explain that for someone out there who’s picturing their future exit or what have you. 

Donn Davis: Yeah, so we issued 5% of our stock and didn’t have to give away cash. We don’t have cash to give away. We wanna use our cash to grow our business, so we don’t let cash go out of the business. We keep our expenses low. We don’t pay dividends, right? We pay low salaries. So we [00:10:00] didn’t wanna buy things for cash. We wanna only use our stock to do that. 

AJ Maestas: And existing investors were diluted. 

Donn Davis: Diluted correct. Just like when you raise new capital. 

AJ Maestas: Yeah. And again, I’m doing this because I’m belaboring the point because I have this feeling like there’s a real gap in knowledge on private equity transactions. 

Donn Davis: And later, I think you’re gonna talk about Team Liquid, and we can get into that, ’cause also what people are missing is maybe you invested low, but you also invested a lot of capital to grow it along the way. So your basis is much higher than everybody reads online. 

AJ Maestas: Yeah. That’s a good parallel for these investments we’re seeing in private equity in some of these sports teams, right? 

Where- … it might be, it might be zero dividends, it might be capital calls, but exit at- 

Donn Davis: That’s right. 

AJ Maestas: Multiple of what you paid, but, you have this illiquid asset, your money’s locked in. Minority investors have virtually no voice or voting rights sometimes at all. the stadium when they wanna come by. 

Let’s use that example ’cause boy, I lost my ass on some ESports stuff. My wife’s super risk-averse. It’s one of those things where it just takes 1 out of 10 losses to have her super uncomfortable. Tell me your ESports story. Please. 

Donn Davis: I didn’t even know what ESports was. [00:11:00] My, my young son at the time, was 16, was playing League of Legends and wouldn’t leave the game to come to dinner, cause he says, “I can’t let my teammates down. I can’t walk out of the game.” And I go, “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” And then my partner at Revolution, Ted Leonsis, he was hearing the same thing from, some of the young people who were working at the Wizards and the Capitals. And so together with Peter Guber, we bought Team Liquid for $10 million. We bought 70%. And the theory then was two things. One, it’s almost like buying the NFL in the 1950s. You don’t need to believe a lot in order to be okay. Our cost basis is so low at $10 million. And by the way, it was the number four, number five team at the time. 

It’s the number one team the last three years, but it was number four, number five at the time. So it was not the Dallas Cowboys. It was, it was more like the San Diego Chargers, A- or something like that. Oh. It was a good franchise- … but it was not a top-tier franchise but right now, it’s more like the Packers meets the Cowboys in terms of where Team Liquid is. 

But number two is I wanted to learn. There was an emerging digital gaming [00:12:00] space, that for us, the investment was we have to get in the middle. Sometimes you can only learn many ways to either make money or save yourself from losing money by getting in the middle. You can’t just study on the sidelines. 

Your learning is limited. Your relationships are limited. Your ability to connect the dots is limited, unless you’re in the middle and you actually can experience that. So to me, those are the two benefits of Team Liquid. I quickly saw something that fascinated me. They didn’t really own anything. 

They don’t own the intellectual property. It’s owned by others. And so therefore, the two biggest revenue streams, if you own sports, are media rights and live. And live could be host fees, tickets, experiences, gate, all kind of stuff. There’s no live, and there’s no media. Okay. So the ability to generate revenue in esports is very limited. 

The upside therefore is very limited. So when people are saying esports could be one or two billion dollar franchises, I didn’t see how you could ever get to 250 [00:13:00] million of revenue. You just don’t see it. There’s not enough input. There’s not enough revenue streams. So for us, it will be a great investment because the NFL in 1950s, you can make a, you don’t have to do a lot because you got it at the right time at the right price. I only stayed on the board and only stayed interested for about a year, cause to me it didn’t have the scope and the scale that it could be very big. 

AJ Maestas: Yeah, interesting. Okay. All right. Yeah, sadly we even knew at the time, right? That it was the, it was the producer of the games that were making money. They were putting on the tournaments as well But you know what? 

Donn Davis: But it’s okay. In making 100 investment decisions in my career, it’s very important to analyze the decision you made. Was it a good decision? Too many people analyze, “Did I make money or lose money?” And therefore, if they made money, they thought it was a good decision. 

If they lost money, they thought it was a bad decision. You need to separate the outcome from the decision and the factors you took at the decision at the time. And if you [00:14:00] do that, you’ll make more winning decisions going forward. You could have made a good decision and lost money, and a bad decision and made money, and if you repeat bad decisions over time, you’re gonna lose. 

If you repeat good decisions over time, you’ll win, but that doesn’t mean necessarily that individual one will produce for you, but the repetitive over time will. 

AJ Maestas: How about media? Again, I don’t wanna have to read your whole resume to everybody here, but you spent a lot of time in media, and I’m, we’re talking like back to Tribune and when you worked at the Cubs. 

But the AOL thing, I think a lot of people in, 1998 would look at AOL and say it’s going to be one of the winners.” So what what do you think… How this is gonna all shake out? Who’s gonna own who? We cannot have 15, 20 different people in the media, in sports media business, so who’s gonna exist in 10 or 20 years, and who’s gonna win and why? 

Donn Davis: Yeah, look, I love Tribune. I love Chicago. I was a general counsel for the Cubs. I had my front row seats. So it pained me to leave Chicago to go to AOL, and both Tribune Company and AOL were valued at $4 billion at the same time. So it’s very interesting, cause to [00:15:00] me, right now, there’s two things that are very clear in sports, so they’re not hiding, but who’s gonna act on them? 

One is sports, and then two is scale. So sports, 95 out of 100 of the top programs are live sports, and in chapter one of streaming, there was 10,000 scripted shows. 10,000 by, Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Peacock, Hulu. So what is the next 1,000 scripted shows gonna do in order to change your behavior and sub count? 

Nothing. But what do they keep doing? Scripted shows. Their budgets are still 80/20 scripted shows versus live sports, and Netflix still 95/5. So where is the next [00:16:00] shift in streaming subs gonna come from when live sports moves? So the next winners in live sports will be in streaming will be who gets live sports. 

Now everybody says, “I don’t need it.” Of course you don’t need it, those businesses are doing great. 

AJ Maestas: Yeah, they say they don’t need it- But do you? … and then they buy it, and then it completely changes their subscriber base, right? Like- … every time they b- 

Donn Davis: But it’s over. So to me, when you take live sports from traditional, they’re dead. 

So number one, the streamer’s next chapter, call it the next 10 years, the last 10 years were 10,000 scripted, the next 10 years will be live sports, and that will determine winners and losers in streaming. And when you go to traditional, they need scale, because the streamers have 10 times the cash flow of the traditional companies. 

So the traditional companies don’t have any money, so they all have to combine to get scale. Right now there’s eight of them. There can only be two. Maybe three. [00:17:00] So because they need more cash flow in order to compete in the game I just talked about, whether it’s programming on the scripted, whether it’s sports rights. 

So to me, that’s a very interesting game that will all be about aggressiveness and strategic forethought, and that game is all talked about, but really hasn’t played out yet. 

AJ Maestas: In our media work, we have this, introductory slides we take our clients through that kind of shows the, balance sheet of these tech players, to your point, their cash flow, etc, etc. They could buy pretty much anything they want and when they want it. So is there a moment in which they buy some of the legacy players in the media world, and why? Or do you think they just can beat them to death? Because I hear your consolidation, but even with the consolidation, are they gonna get there? 

It’s their core business. It’s the one way they make money. There’s all this pressure, right? They’re cannibalizing their own business with streaming, so their margins, there’s compression of margins, their valuations will suffer, and here’s the tech world where this is just a sideshow, not even the core business. 

Do you [00:18:00] think they’re gonna actually survive, or will some of them be bought, and how, why? 

Donn Davis: I think, first of all, the traditional people have to buy each other. They need to gang up first, right? ‘Cause that has to happen, and the streamers might be more smart to be much more surgical. Why buy everything when you don’t need to buy everything? 

It might just be more headache. I went through AOL Time Warner merger. I know what headache is, right? I know what value destruction is. So what do I mean by more surgical? Just put more money into buying more IP. You wanna own IP. So if I’m a streamer, how do I own sports IP, not just rent? They own all their programming IP. 

They don’t rent it. Why weren’t they a bigger bidder for WWE when it was up for sale? So to me, I would own IP, whether it’s unscripted, whether it’s scripted, whether it’s sports, and the first two, that’s their business model. The third one, you can’t own the NBA And owning a team in the NBA [00:19:00] makes no sense cause you don’t control the schedule and the IP, or the players association to leverage it. 

So to me, back to your question about emerging sports leagues, you will see the streamers own those because they can make them huge, and they can own the IP and leverage the IP on a global basis. So I think you’re gonna have to see the traditional people consolidate, and the streamers will be very smart and strategic in the aggressive M&A they do in sports. 

AJ Maestas: All right. Okay. Interesting. Now we are gonna mark this down, and we’re gonna revisit and we hope to prove you true. Okay. While we’re making predictions, I have to push you a little further because I hear you say that, and it makes me think of the stock market, and we haven’t talked about AI. 

I know you have AI investments, so I would like to hear your thesis on why AI and tell me why it’s not overvalued or if it is, and if you’re willing to even talk about the market in general. In the private market, some of these giant, private equity exits, one of the places they have to go is the public market, but the earnings multiple is so good that [00:20:00] usually looks good, and the earnings multiple right now is ridiculously  high. 

So yeah, tell me from your expert point of view, AI, overvalued or undervalued and share what you’re willing about your own investments. 

Donn Davis: Yeah. The first thing I’ll say is I’m not a public market investor. I build private companies, and that’s where my expertise is. That’s where your personal- The only thing I do in a public market is, I buy some QQQ like everybody else. 

Do you know what I’m saying? So I move public markets- And- Public markets, I claim zero to negative expertise, right? Okay. In the, in, in the private markets, I’ll say one thing in general, and then I’ll share a specific story. I’ve learned that the winners are worth more than you think. 

You rarely overpay for the winners, but you have to pick the winners. Okay? 

AJ Maestas: Yeah, that’s true. 

Donn Davis: But you have to pick the winners. So but when people talk about valuations, the valuation of the segment is probably too high, whether it’s AI or whether it’s the last hot segment. [00:21:00] But the valuations of the will-be winners are not. 

So the key is picking the winners. My specific story, I was fortunate to work with Steve Case and Ted Leonsis. The three of us were the partners in Revolution Growth. And we invested in between 30 and 34 companies, over our 12 years. We typically put in $30 or $40 million investments pretty big investments. 

And we had several companies go to zero. That feels bad to lose $30, $40 million. But we had an unbelievable record of 10 companies went to a billion, and five went to 10 billion. That’s wild. I think it’s almost unparalleled. And the company that I learned the most from was Tempest AI, which is the big healthcare AI company. 

We did the series A. Eric Lekofsky had built Groupon, and Ted Leonsis had been the chairman and instrumental to working with Eric. And Eric [00:22:00] came to us at Revolution to say, “I really value Ted Leonsis, and I’ll let you invest in my series A.” None of us could understand what Eric was saying. We understood his strategy of using AI and big data to make cancer outcomes better. 

That we understood. The rest we didn’t understand, and we listened for days and days. And then we hired the best diligence people at John Hopkins, and they wrote a 100-page diligence report telling us it’ll never work. And so then we hired a second group. They said Eric’s all wrong.” So all the data we got back, can’t make this investment. 

And Ted Leonsis said, “Eric Lekofsky is a visionary, and we need to make this bet.” And we made 15 times our money. 

AJ Maestas: Over what time period, can I ask? 

Donn Davis: Eight or nine years. You cannot look backward. [00:23:00] Nobody told Steve Jobs they needed an iPhone. You cannot look backward. I’m sure all that diligence by those experts was correct, but it was looking backward. 

It wasn’t looking forward. And so you have to credit, and you have to support, and you have to be accretive to the energy of true entrepreneurs. That’s where disproportionate value comes from, in any of these investments. 

AJ Maestas: Yeah. So I’ve got some rapid-fire questions to wrap things up. 

Donn Davis: Yeah, sure. 

AJ Maestas: But before I do, is there anything I can answer for you? Anything you think we missed? 

Donn Davis: I think what’s super interesting is the UFC media deal- … that happened with Paramount. About 1 billion. And going on there. To me, that’s the only thing that maybe we talk about for a minute. 

AJ Maestas: Yeah. What do you think? I think they bifurcated that versus what were they were selling… I’m trying to think about what they were selling at the same time. They went to market with that and, I knew it was a priority for major media players, right? People were holding their budget for it, for all the [00:24:00] reasons you described, global. but but weren’t they going to package that with something else, and then they ultimately just did an a la carte deal? 

Donn Davis: Yeah, so interesting. They went with their pay-per-view. Yeah. Call it their premium fights, their secondary fights, their contender series, their boxing, and Paramount bought it all. 

Everybody said it was gonna be a split package, and Paramount bought it all, and nobody saw Paramount doing it. But to me, there’s three things that are super interesting if you’re a business and sport fan, which a lot of your people are. One, MMA is mainstream. Everybody said Fox overpaid. 15 years ago. And everybody said ESPN overpaid. 

Fox was 150, ESPN was 300. This deal’s 1.1 billion. So everybody talks about the NBA deal, but the biggest increase the last 12 years in three renewal cycles is UFC. Biggest percentage increase, big deal. So MMA is now mainstream, and those [00:25:00] who are MMA fans go, “Duh, it always has been.” No. When something crosses over from niche to mass and truly becomes mainstream, big deal. 

So it’s now got to be in your sports portfolio, ’cause everybody who’s 18 to 35, that’s the MMA audience. And so if you’re a streamer very core to have MMA. Great news for PFL, because there were six bidders for UFC, and five didn’t get it. And so for seven years, there’s no MMA on a premium basis other than PFL. 

So we were delighted, cause we have been saying to the market we have a substitute product, but we don’t have a substitute brand. I’ve been building companies long enough to know what we- is true and what’s not true. Our product quality and our athlete quality is Coke and Pepsi. Our brand is not yet well-known, so we need a media partner to truly get behind us and promote constantly and support, and we will close that gap and be a very big company. 

So to me now, we have a market where there are five companies, maybe even more, but five bidders [00:26:00] who didn’t get MMA, who understand it’s mainstream, who understand its value that didn’t before. Because last time UFC went to market, there was one bidder. There was one bidder for UFC, ESPN. That’s it. So you’re seeing MMA go from off-Broadway to Broadway, and that’s gonna be great for us. 

And their value is 25 million per event. Cause when people hear 1.1 billion, they think the NBA. NBA has tonnage, so many games. That’s 25 million every time you tune in on Saturday night. That’s what UFC gets. PFL gets one million per event. But we’re one-third of the viewership, so we loved it. We’re gonna go to market, in the second quarter, and we’re not gonna get one-third of twen- of 25 million because we know our brand, but we’re gonna get more than a million. So we’re gonna get a good partner and a good price, and we’re excited to talk to the partners. 

AJ Maestas: Okay, rapid-fire stuff. All right? Quick answers. Favorite place to travel? 

Donn Davis: This is gonna be uncool answer. Home. My [00:27:00] family are big travelers. They’re big explorers. I am not. Man I love being at home. My 28-year-old son has been to more countries, 25, than I have, and I’m 63. 

AJ Maestas: And home is? 

Donn Davis: Great falls, Virginia, about 15 miles from DC. 

AJ Maestas: Okay. All right. Fair. Fair. You could stay there year-round, and that’s fine. 

A life hack you use for health, wellness, productivity, anything like that? 

Donn Davis: Yeah, interesting. I would say priority. Too many people say, “I don’t have time to get to it. I didn’t have time to do it,” whether it’s sleep eight hours, whether it’s work out. 

We all have time, but we only have time for our top three priorities. Identify your top three, get rid of the junk, and you have time to do it, and the more you really own and internalize that, the happier you’re gonna be and the more you’re gonna get to the stuff you really wanna do. 

AJ Maestas: What are those top three for you? 

Donn Davis: To me, I’ve always been very work-centric. I like achievement, I like accomplishment, I like impact, and you can’t [00:28:00] do that unless you’re all in. So I’m work-centric, and a lot of people say, “That’s not cool. I believe in life and balance.” I’ve always been work-centric. That’s number one. And number two is my family, but I don’t get to spend a lot of leisure time. 

I don’t get a lot of friend time. I don’t get a lot of golf time. I don’t get a lot of movie time. I don’t get a lot of party time. Those are gone. And number three is I sleep eight to nine hours a night. I need that to really recharge and go intense, ’cause it’s not just the hours, it’s the intensity of the hours. Takes a lot out of you. So to me, those are my three and I really work to focus on those three, but a lot of things gotta go the, to the wayside that I’d like to do. 

AJ Maestas: What PFL fighter would you least want to get in the ring with? 

Donn Davis: Man, I’m gonna give you, I’m gonna give you the male and female fighter. 

It’s easy, Francis Ngannou. Hardest puncher ever. And if he was still at UFC, we wouldn’t be hearing about anything else, ’cause he is the baddest man on the planet. He’s also a wonderful person, but you don’t wanna mess with Francis Ngannou. [00:29:00] And on the women’s side, it’s clearly Cris Cyborg. 20 years, five titles from five different companies, one loss, and she can beat you every which way. The smartest and toughest woman fighter ever. So Francis would just scare the crap out of me, right? And kill me immediately, but Cris would beat us every which way, no matter how many defenses we thought of and no matter how much tape we watched. 

AJ Maestas: So you’re not getting in the ring with her, I take it? 

Donn Davis: I wouldn’t either. 

AJ Maestas: Is there a hobby outside of that work, sleep, and family, by the way? 

Donn Davis: Yeah, I’ve always loved architecture and design. I love it. My wife lets me keep messing around with our house. 

When I built Exclusive Resorts, I helped design the whole house experience, the residential four homes and the whole vacation experience. When Steve Case and I owned Miraval- Wellness spa, designed the spa and the villas there. So to me, architecture and design and how it impacts your mood, how it impacts a family being together, how it impacts your life, love it. 

AJ Maestas: Those villas are [00:30:00] beautiful. 

Donn Davis: Thank you, man. 

AJ Maestas: Annual trip for my wife and I. 

Donn Davis: Yeah. That, actually I didn’t know you’d been there. Yeah. So I just really love that. So whenever I have time, whenever work is, call it, regular intense instead of super intense, that’s what I do. 

AJ Maestas: Favorite television show or movie? 

Donn Davis: Favorite TV show of all time, boy, Friday Night Lights. Clear eye, full heart. Friday Night Lights would be TV show for sure. It has it all. And movie, Ferris Bueller. Who doesn’t wanna be Ferris? Who doesn’t wanna be Ferris? 

AJ Maestas: I approve of these. I approve of these. I had an East Dillon T-shirt I used to wear about 10- Yeah … 15 years ago. Every once in a while on a plane or something it would get a shout-out. Okay, we have a lot of students, a lot of sports business students that listen to this. Any advice for young people in sports? 

Donn Davis: Balance is overrated. From college to age 30, all you wanna do is focus on your career. That’s all you wanna do. Or, and if you wanna find a spouse also, awesome goal. [00:31:00] Awesome goal. Very important. But other than those two things, you shouldn’t be doing anything else. You have time for everything else later, and the foundation that will do for you, if you’re all in, will make you so happy. 

It’s not just about being successful. When you have a job you love, you’re happy, and the best way to get a job you love is to have some success and really get somewhere. And so to me, you can do that only by being all in. So find the ability, find the focus, find the determination, find the grit to not say, “I’m leaving for yoga at 5:00. I’m going to drinks with my friends on Wednesday. I can only work 40 hours. What about one day remote?” That’s all not gonna make you happy long term. 

AJ Maestas: For those listening, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to reach out to us. My email’s AJ@NVGT.com, and you can find me on my LinkedIn page or the Navigate LinkedIn page. But again, this is AJ Maestas with [00:32:00] Navigating Sports Business, and joined by Donn Davis today. Thank you for joining us, and I really appreciate your time. That was really insightful. 

Donn Davis: Absolutely.