“Genuinely helping people with no expectation of anything in return,” he said in describing his premise. “Think about this. Do you help real estate agents and say ‘hey, I just sent you Jennie and Bill to buy a house. Have you sent me anything back?’ Don’t be that person. Don’t think about the money. Money follows success, not the other way around.”
He asked for a show of hands in conducting an impromptu poll. “Anybody ever give money to a homeless person?” he asked. “Did you think they were going to do something for you? Why did you do it? It’s the right thing to do.”
Foregoing NBA broadcast rights revenue was the right thing to do
All things being relative – and proportional to one’s budget – he gave an example from his own life to illustrate the joys of doing the right thing. The anecdote centered on his purchase of the professional basketball franchise Phoenix Suns last year. As Forbes reported, Ishbia and his older brother, Justin Ishbia, agreed to buy majority control of the Suns at a record price that valued the team at $4 billion. For good measure, the transaction also included purchasing the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury basketball team.
One might have expected Ishbia to sell broadcast rights – a deal he estimated to reap $30 million to $40 million – as team owners typically do. In so doing, companies buying the rights then sell them to a cable television provider, he explained. Advertising slots sold during game broadcasts then yields a profit for the company buying the rights to broadcast the games, he added.
In doing his due diligence prior to the team purchase, Ishbia said he’d hear from many fans how they were unable to afford cable service in order to watch the games. “You know what we did?” he said of the traditional selling of broadcast rights. “I got rid of it. You know why? Because it’s the right thing to do. Is it the right economic business model? Probably not. But you know what? I got three million households watching the Suns games in Arizona instead of 600,000,” he added to spontaneous applause from those gathered. “It’s their team,” he said of fans.
Source: mpamag.com