Robert MacIntyre not giving up major dream after falling just short at US Open
Robert MacIntyre will not give up on his dream of becoming a major champion after falling just short at the US Open.
MacIntyre had hopes of becoming the first Scot to win a major since Paul Lawrie in 1999 when he was the clubhouse leader on the final day at a rain-soaked Oakmont.
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He produced an excellent two-under-par 68 to sit at one over and looked set for a possible play-off with JJ Spaun, who had two holes to play.
But the American saved his best for last, first driving the green for birdie at the 17th before draining a monster 65-foot putt on the 18th to win by two shots.
MacIntyre, still sodden from torrential rain that caused a 96-minute delay, was watching open-mouthed in the scorer's office and could do nothing but applaud his opponent and mouth 'wow'.
The 28-year-old's career trajectory is on the rise, moving up to 12th in the rankings, and he looks set to be part of Europe's Ryder Cup team again later this year.
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The Scot wrote on Instagram on Monday: 'Competing in the deep end of major championships is what I've dreamed of and yesterday was the first real taste of it. We'll be back for more.'
He added after Sunday's round: 'I've got a chance to win a major championship. It's what I've dreamed of as a kid, sitting back home watching all the majors.
'It was a day that I said to myself, 'Why not? Why can't it be me today?' when I was going round, and I just trusted myself.
'Almost got there, but not quite. I always thought I could really challenge, even going into today, but obviously the start wasn't a help.'
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His dreams looked to be in tatters when he was two over after three holes but an eagle at the par-five fourth kick-started his round.
And he was pleased with the way he fought back into contention.
'I am absolutely delighted with the way I played. I got off to a rough start, I didn't get off to the start I wanted to, but I have been working so hard on staying patient and got my reward,' he added.
'I was watching the leaderboard all day and I saw I wasn't really going away. It was just about digging in and digging in.'
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We had relationships with all the sports properties and players, and look, here are the different businesses that we could be in. So, it really was a pretty easy strategic evolution, one that I think everyone bought into in real time. Advertisement RK: But you still have to raise the money. What I think is so different about you, and probably what sets you apart from most, is that there are some people who are great entrepreneurs and innovators, there are some great CEOs, and then there are great fundraisers and people who truly know how to raise money. You are really good at raising money. Would you agree? MR: No, I don't. I think if you have the right consumer value proposition, you have the right business strategy, and people can air-check the math, and then all of the diligence kind of validates the air check and their math. It's a pretty easy decision to go to somebody to say, look, we're in one business today. When you look at the size of how big the TAM — the total addressable market — is of the betting and gaming business is going to be just in North America alone. Look at how big the collectible business is going to be. And we'd already signed these deals to evolve and take over the rights from the NFL, the NBA, and Major League Baseball within the trading card business. It was such an easy answer for investors to say, 'Yeah, I want to do this,' because it's such a massive opportunity. RK: So, what was the strategy for the gambling vertical? MR: So, for the betting and gaming business, it was pretty natural that the biggest cost for companies like DraftKings and FanDuel was acquiring customers. And we already had a very big installed customer base in the Fanatics' core business. At that point, I think we had about 80 million customers. Today, we probably have 120 million customers. So, really obviously, look, if the biggest expense is customer acquisition, we have so many direct relationships with a hundred-million-plus sports fans today. And then on top of it, we have a brand, Fanatics, that's very well known. We felt like if we could make the value proposition better, then wow, what a massive opportunity we have. A brand that everybody knows and respects, a hundred million plus customers, and then we take a value prop and make it better. Advertisement The reason our value prop is better is that, one, we have a really great product. You say it to me all the time, that people tell you how much they like the Fanatics Sportsbook. No. 2, every time you bet with us, you earn fan cash. And so it's a better value proposition. We're going to give away, next year, about $600 million of fan cash. That's not like membership rewards, where a lot of people don't use it with fan cash. People earn fan cash, and then they burn fan cash pretty quickly. And they can use it to make bets on sports, they can use it to get tickets to games, they can use it to buy merchandise, they can buy collectibles, they can go to Fanatics Live, they can go to Lids, they can go to Topps. So, you've got this pretty incredible currency, and every time you bet, we're going to lose, we give you fan cash. And on top of it, if your player gets hurt during the first quarter of a game, we actually take that player out of your player prop. It's kind of like free insurance. RK: So, when you're in a sector like that where you have two dominant players, does the goal start to become to go for the top guys? Or is it to go and gain market share and figure out your place and fine-tune your product? MR: First of all, you know me to be a very transparent person. I have huge respect for FanDuel and DraftKings. They're both great companies, and they're very dominant players. People say to me all the time, Hey, there's a duopoly between FanDuel and DraftKings.. You have no chance. I fucking love that. Go tell your guy. KD has no chance in the basketball game. He's going to say, fuck you, I'm going to go dominate that game. So, for me, people telling us we have no chance in business, that's love. That's love language, too. RK: Where are you now in market share, and where are DraftKings and FanDuel? Advertisement MR: Today, we have about 7-7.5% of the sports market. Two years in, not even two years into it, 20 months into it. FanDuel and DraftKings have 75, 80% of the market combined. So call it ... 35, 40% of the market. That's OK, we're in this for the long term. We got a good value proposition. We keep making that value proposition better. And to me, the question is, how do our customers feel about using Fanatics Sportsbook? And the feedback I'm getting is that people love it and that they feel like it's a better deal, it's a better value proposition. They like the product. RK: Can you talk about the numbers you'll do? MR: Last year was our first year of revenue. I think we had about 10 billion in bets placed between iGaming and sportsbook. And we have about $350 million in revenue. This year, we should have about 30 billion in bets placed on our platform and have about a billion dollars on our revenue. RK: And that's how much of the market share? Advertisement MR: In sports? About seven and half percent. 7%, but it's grown every month too. (David Cabrera) RK: And for context, what would FanDuel or DraftKings do on a year? MR: DraftKings this year would do about $6 billion, and FanDuel [would] be about $7 billion. So, call it six to seven times bigger than we are. And by the way, I like that. It makes me hungry. It makes me ready to go. RK: Even early days when I was speaking to you till now, it feels like your kind of expectation of where you can bring this has changed. MR: Look, I remember when we started in the fan gear business 2011, we were a distant No. 3, No. 4 player. Now we're a strong leader in collectibles. We started in 2022, and now we're the leader. And I'd be full of shit if I said, I didn't sit here saying I dream about being number one and to me, I'm going to work tirelessly to become number one. Now, I think if FanDuel and DraftKings here that they laugh at me and they say it's got no fucking shot. But great. How many athletes? And by the way, I'm the worst athlete in the world. I think I've publicly shown a few times, but how many times you go tell someone they can't do something, they just want to do it that much more. Advertisement RK: Yeah. So, in the collectibles vertical, you saw an opportunity as well. MR: We did. That one was very different because we saw a business that had grown because of COVID, and quite frankly, a very tired industry had three companies, Panini, Topps, Upper Deck, that were all, I'd say, living off the COVID bump. They weren't innovating the product, they weren't marketing the products, they weren't worrying about the collector. They weren't thinking about how to really grow the business. And so I'd say of all the things I've done in my business career that's been so far, the one that's been easiest to make a major impact overnight, because of how I think it just being blunt, how bad the competition was. RK: And it felt like the way you saw it was pretty interesting to a lot of people. There was a bubble that was being created during COVID, right? The prices soared. I bought a ton of cards that are 20% of the value that I spent at that time. And people thought that that was a moment in time, and that the industry would fade, where it was quite the opposite. MR: No, it's what everybody thought. And to be honest, had we not entered it, I think that's what would've happened. Advertisement RK: It was a masterclass in how you navigated the dealings with the teams and the leagues. Can you walk me through a little bit like that year or two that you played this incredible game? MR: I don't think it was a masterclass. The reason I don't think it was a master class, when we went to them and said, 'Look, there's no marketing trading cards. There has not been much innovation at all in the product. The collector experience is awful. There's so much negativity about the collector experience.' All these, by the way, so many of the hobby shops looked old entirely, if you go into them, these cards aren't cool. It's like the nerdy guy in the corner, and here's our plan for how we're going to make it much bigger. Oh, by the way, you don't participate in the secondary market. That all goes through eBay. You don't participate in the live commerce market. That's all going through whatnot. By the way, we'll start these businesses cut you in, give you a higher road rate and guarantee it. Honestly, it was like they're like, How quickly can we get this deal done? It was not a complicated sell. RK: Where can this continue to grow? MR: Baseball is probably the best example. There were less than 10 baseball players who collected baseball cards when we bought Topps, Jan. 1, 2022. Now, there are more than a hundred current baseball players who collect cards. Think about the debut patch. That was the best invention I think in the history of trading cards. We put a patch on a player on the first game they play. There's only one in the world. When they get done that first game, we take that patch off of 'em. So think about it, Ani, when he played his first game in the major leagues, we had that debut patch. We weren't doing it yet. Now we take that, we put that into a one-on-one card, and who will want to have Ohtani's first card? Who will want to have KD's first card? Who will want to have Michael Jordan's first card? So, it's such a special thing we can do with the debut patch in it. I mean, that's been such an innovation, the trading card business. 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MR: Look, the way you got to think about it, you have different segments. Lids is like a younger customer. Again, more streetwear. Cool. I want my different hats as the core business. Mitchell & Ness is more vintage. We also make a lot of Nike merchandise. So, all the NFL merchandise from Nike, we actually make that merchandise. And so, you serve in each business kind of different customers. Our job is to make sure we can take care of every customer for whatever they want. RK: Can you still think about future verticals, or is it too early to think that way? MR: I think it's too early. I think we need to be locked in on how do we keep this. Again, if you looked at each business we sat down and talked about with the CEO of each of these three businesses, what do they need to do? They have so many things that they need to do. And so we're talking about the duopoly that exists between FanDuel and DraftKings, that they have 75 or 80% of the market. ... I ain't shit. So, I got to think about how do we really build that market share? How do we keep making the value proposition better? How do we keep building there? And so in each business, we can tell you all the things that we're not doing well that we need to do better. Advertisement RK: What was the strategy as you thought about someone like Tom Brady and how he adds value to the business? MR: Well, take a step back. I think for me, I say this all the time. We all learn differently. I think you probably learn more. Like I learn, I don't really read. I actually haven't read a book since ninth grade. True story. No one believes me. ... I don't read now. I read emails, but I'm not reading books. I was terrible at school. Everyone knows that, 780 combined on my SATs. That's bad. You have 400 for putting your names on the test. ... And so the way I learned is by having great people around me, and then we each learn from each other. So we each talk about Travis or Tom. I think we're each learning from each other all the time. And I love that I'm going to learn from you and you're going to learn from me. And so if we take a walk in the Hamptons, we start each asking each other questions. We're learning from each other. And that's kind of the way I grow. And so for me, I think what's been a little different is one, I believe that we would, I would've nothing to do without the incredible people that play on the field, on the court, on the ice. And so I'm hugely appreciative of all the athletes that we build a business around. No. 2, we have to direct relationships with 5,000 athletes today. We pay hundreds of millions of dollars directly to athletes who sign memorabilia and trading cards for us that we have partnerships with. And for that reason, we think about how we can do great things together. And so my view is if I'm really invested in the people that we work with, who are really important to us, they're going to be really invested in us. And you just build this super authentic long-term partnership. I think that's what we have with certainly any of the key athletes and most of the big athletes. We have truly special partnerships, and then we're trying to help them in the things that are important to them. I mean, I spend a lot of time, I bet you 20% of my week goes to helping my friends and things that they're very involved in and invested. And I think that that pays dividends just because your relationship is that much stronger and you're helping each other grow. I want you to do great, and you want me to do great. I want to do that with everybody. I want everyone to grow up. It's one of the things I don't understand about certain people. I want everyone around me to do fucking great. RK: Yeah, I can attest that that's how you are. Advertisement MR: For sure. And I've always been that way. And other people, they're rooting for people to go down. They're rooting against people. I'm not like that, man. I want everyone in the world to do amazing. I want to push everybody up. I can. People have helped me so much. Why do I not want to help everybody around me? So I think that mentality just makes these relationships extra authentic and special. RK: Who's helped you? MR: Oh, so many people. I mean, the first person I always think about is the Kraft family. I mean Robert, Jonathan Kraft. I mean, those guys found me in 2008, 2007. They helped me a lot. I wouldn't be who I was today without them both, from some of the relationships that they helped me forge, but also just the great business advice that came along the years learning from all the people that are around me. I mean, you brought up Travis and Tommy, I've learned so much from those guys. I'm always picking nuggets up in every conversation. That's the way I grow. RK: When you say still nowhere, I can understand the mentality. I think people like you, people especially who took this unconventional path, did poorly in school, dropped out of college, have this mind that you have. It's like you're always going to have this level of impostor syndrome and feeling that you're not there. But do you not take one second to ever look at what you've built? Advertisement MR: Not one second. I don't care. Here's the way I think about it. Until I build a brand that's a beloved brand by hundreds of millions of sports fans, until I build the most important company in sports, one of the most important companies in consumer products, I haven't done shit. RK: But it is. MR: It's not. It's not. And by the way, I don't ever want to be covered. I'm just getting going. And you talked about, I know, while I'm sitting here right now doing this interview with you, there's a bunch of people plotting against me. That's the world we live in. And so that's competition, that by the way, that's healthy. It makes you better. You know what? The better your competition is, the better you are. And so I like that, but I'm pretty humble about where we are. I think in our original business, the fan gear business, we're 25% of where we want to get to. Maybe we're half from a revenue perspective, but from all things I want to do from a product innovation, from a consumer perspective, we have so much more we can keep doing. We think about it every day. We've just, by the way, in the last year, we've increased NPS, that's net promoter score by 20 points. It's so hard to do it because consumers are telling us they like what we're doing better and better. We've reduced shipping costs, we've increased shipping speeds, we're better on stock. We're just doing so many things better than business. But we still have so much more to do in the trading card business. ... Why would I be comfortable? We haven't done shit. Advertisement Now, I could look back to things that we did wrong in our original business, the commerce business. The thing is with us that when we make a mistake, we acknowledge it, we fix it, we're right on it. And so that's our mentality, and you need to have that mentality. If not, someone's going to take you out. That's just the way it works. RK: Don't you find mistakes motivating in some ways love 'em, like inspiring? MR: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I was just saying yesterday we just did something in another business that I'm an investor in and I think it's not working. I said to the CEO of the company, look, we got into the NFT business in 2021, raised a hundred million dollars from outside investors within four months. I knew it wast going to work. We gave our investors the money back basically and said, this isn't going to work. That was a fast great ally oop, and I wasn't embarrassed, so I was proud that I acted quickly. I like taking Ls, you tell me I take an outbreak, no problem. I'm going to figure out how am I going to be better. What are we going to do? How are we going to be stronger? If you don't have that mentality, you're [going to] become irrelevant. RK: Why FanaticsFest? What was the vision around that? Advertisement MR: I had been to so many music festivals where I just saw these incredible showings. And then when we got on the trading card business, I went to the show called The National. So, when you walk into the national, you have two feelings. One, you're overwhelmed and enjoyed by the pure quantity of collectors that you're like, this is insane. What an incredible, What an incredible hobby that I'm fortunate to sit in the middle of. The second thing you see is it feels very antiquated. It feels like something from 20, 30, 40 years ago. I don't think it really changed much from when I was in high school and middle school and cared about trading cards. It Like that, antiquated. And so then I went to Comic-Con like, man, this is sick. This is great. Why can't we don't? Sports fans deserve something like this? I think we were lucky. We recognized because I think next year we'll pay close to $2 billion to sports organizations, teams, leagues, Players, players organizations. And we knew that we had the ability to bring everyone together because of that. And so when we called the NBA and the NFL and Major League Baseball and WW and UFC and NHL and said, Hey, we want to create this first all kind sports festival, people said, Hey fanatic, if you're behind it, we're going to do it. We had 70,000 people show up for the first time. I mean, you told me you came there, you brought Ant and kd. What'd you guys think when you came to this first-of-a-kind sports festival. And by this year, it's going to be 50 times better this year. People that weren't there last year that are coming this year — Nike, Dick's Sporting Goods, USTA, FIFA Premier League, F1, LeBron. So many people that are coming this year that weren't there last year. So to me, it's kind of an honor for us to be able to create this first-of-a-kind sports festival. It's incredible. I think 70,000 people the first year. I think we'll have more than a hundred thousand people this year. And the joy that you see in people's faces ... and be able to see each activation from each sleeve, all these different athletes and celebrities and artists and streamers all there. That's incredible. It's pretty incredible. (David Cabrera) RK: Can you take this outside of New York? Advertisement MR: Look, we've had many of the richest countries in the world come to us and say, 'Please bring this to us.; We've had many of the biggest states say, please bring this to my state. The outreach to people who are dying to get a Fanatics Fest in their country or city is pretty preposterous. It is the hardest thing I do each year by a mile. Forget about everything we talked about in our three core businesses. Fanatics Fest is the hardest thing by far and away, organizing hundreds of athletes, celebrities, and artists, a hundred thousand-plus fans, all these sports properties together. That is a really hard thing to do, but it's worth it when you see the happiness on all these fans' faces. And by the way, last year when we did it for the first year, we got a lot right? We also fucked a lot of things up. Okay, we didn't have autographs, right? We had crazy lines and things that weren't working with autographs and pictures, and we had security issues. And you get back, you say, 'OK,' then you go into just a complete focus on how do I fix these things? But that's the way you build any business. And so for me, I think one of the great things is that most athletes really care about their fans a lot. And Fanatics Fest is a way that the greatest athletes, streamers, artists, celebrities in the world can connect with their fans in a pretty unique and special way. And I love doing that. RK: Yeah. Without question, is there anything else you want to do in your life? Is there something still on Michael Rubin's bucket list? You've owned sports teams, you have three wonderful daughters. You've traveled the world. You're still building this juggernaut of a business. And I know in your mind, you're just starting, so I believe you when you say that. But is there anything else that you fantasize about in your life? MR: There's nothing else I fantasize. Here's what I say. I'm living my dream every day. Getting to do this 15, 17 hours a day is the greatest joy in the world. If I'd say, 'What do I want to do in my life?' I need to be healthier. I need to take better care of myself. I was a little pudgy kid a couple of years ago. Now, I'm 40 pounds lighter. I don't work out enough. I need to sleep a little bit more. I need to spend a little more time with my kids. I have three incredible kids. And just how do I get that balance? But I just love the action of building Fanatics so much that I struggle with balance. But I'm never going to own a sports team again. I have no interest in it. I don't need anything else in my life. I just want to make Fanatics the greatest company in the world. And then look, I think the other thing is I do love giving back, but I think that's a responsibility. When you're in my position and you're afforded this incredible opportunity of building a company like ours, you want to make an impact. So we do a lot of that work. We do it with the REFORM Alliance that I started with Jay and Meek Mill and Robert Kraft and everybody else. And I do it with Make-A-Wish, and we love doing stuff like that. ... That's an honor to do stuff like that. So, I think I like making a difference in this world because it's fun. But what is my ultimate passion? It's building Fanatics.
