The ROAR Podcast: George Barrios Return

<p>George Barrios walked away from a signed offer to run Univision in July 2020, called his former WWE co-CEO Michelle Wilson the next morning, and told her he'd rather build something with her instead. In his second appearance on The ROAR Podcast, he walks Adam Grossman through everything that decision produced: taking Bowlero public via SPAC at the peak of the frothiest IPO market in decades, returning to WWE to architect the merger with UFC that created TKO, and closing this past April on Global Sports Group — a holding company built with CVC around minority stakes in LaLiga, Ligue 1, the WTA, FIVB, and three rugby properties. Leagues and federations only. No teams, by design.</p><p></p><p>Along the way, George unpacks the lesson a former boss gave him at thirty-one — that running a business for the short term is easy, running it for the long term is easy, and doing both at once is the actual job — and the three questions he believes any management team should be able to answer clearly enough for a six-year-old. Then the conversation turns to AI, and the two of them stop agreeing. George argues that a company's alpha lives in its workflow and its data, and that handing that to a vendor under an AI-as-a-service model is a mistake he wouldn't make: build the harness around the model yourself, own the code. Adam pushes back hard from a data governance and partnership angle. Neither one gives ground. Which, as George notes at the close, is about right for a guy whose book is called <i>Sometimes Wrong, But Never in Doubt.</i></p><p></p><p>00:00 Round Two</p><p>00:31 The Book: Sometimes Wrong, But Never in Doubt</p><p>01:29 From Operator to Investor</p><p>04:07 The July 2020 Phone Call</p><p>06:15 Back to WWE and the Road to TKO</p><p>08:58 Taking Bowlero Public</p><p>11:38 Why Bowlero — and Why Not the Flying Taxis</p><p>13:28 Three Hundred SPAC Sponsors</p><p>14:38 The Hardest Thing in Business</p><p>17:00 What the Public Markets Expose</p><p>20:51 Three Questions, Explained to a Six-Year-Old</p><p>23:09 A Detour Through Richard Feynman</p><p>24:50 How Global Sports Group Came Together</p><p>27:59 Why Sports Wins the Re-Architected Value Chain</p><p>30:24 Human Provenance and the Next Three Billion Fans</p><p>32:53 Leagues and Federations, Not Teams</p><p>35:18 "Nine Times Out of Ten, It's an Email List"</p><p>36:27 Not the First Inning — Batting Practice</p><p>37:43 Moving the Needle Without Control</p><p>40:23 The Chief Electricity Officer</p><p>43:29 Why He Wouldn't Sign Up for AI-as-a-Service</p><p>46:47 Build the Harness, Not the Model</p><p>47:48 Where Adam Disagrees</p><p>51:50 Willing to Be Wrong</p><p></p><p></p><p></p>