WHEN: Today, Tuesday, July 25
WHERE: CNBC x Boardroom Game Plan Summit
Following are excerpts from the unofficial transcript of Future of Tennis & Athlete Brand-Building panel that took place today, Tuesday, July 25th, live during the CNBC x Boardroom Game Plan Summit in Los Angeles. The panel featured speakers including: Stuart Duguid, EVOLVE Co-Founder and Nick Kyrgios, Professional Tennis Player.
Video can be found on CNBC.com
Mandatory credit: CNBC x Boardroom Game Plan Summit.
NICK KYRGIOS ON OUTSIDE VENTURES
I had visions in my mind of what I wanted to do outside of tennis. You know, tennis was always you know, I was obsessed with basketball growing up, I kind of fell into tennis and was really good at it. And then I always wanted to use it as a vehicle to do more. And Stuart always had that vision When I met him. We had a phone call. I still remember it and he’s like, I think we can really do some special things together. And now you know, um, you know, part in pickleball teams and you know, I have my own like podcast now. I interviewed Mike Tyson the other day like things like that, that a tennis player would have never done previously before. So, you know, Stuart’s basically opened my world up together. We’ve you know, I have really sentimental here but he’s really changed what changed my life to be honest.
NICK KYRGIOS ON UNION
The union, the PTPA that I’ve joined you know, that’s the Players Association, where we’re the only sport in the world it doesn’t have a player’s association so we have no say in pretty much anything that goes on in the tennis world. And Novak started it and I recently joined and I’ve been working relatively hard to get other players you know, to join and yeah, basically the tennis players we’ve been, you know, pretty underpaid for the last, you know, how many how many years forever for the, for the amount of work that we’re putting in, you know, I had an amazing year last year and I look at some of the numbers that you know, were generated and, you know, Carlos Alcaraz gets the you know, I think the 274th NFL salary, and he’s the best player walking on the planet. So, it starts with, you know, having a player’s union coming together so we can, you know, start opening, you know, ideas for how we how we can get that going and, but I mean, there’s a lot of work to do still.
STUART DUGUID ON FUTURE OF TENNIS
I would say if you take Alcaraz he’s the one who’s obviously a level above everyone else. He’s gonna have an unbelievable career. And I think there’s probably never been a better time to be him. I think when you look at Roger, who had the most amazing brand portfolio of any tennis player, you know, any business person. He made the most money and his last two deals. So on Running and Uniqlo together probably dwarfed everything else he made his entire career. So when you think about people coming in now like Carlos who have these all these opportunities that Nick’s talking about whether it’s owning sports teams or franchises, or investing or equity options instead of traditional cash, like the guy has so much potential ahead of him runway like it must be very exciting for him.
