Bloomberg Talks Sep 21, 2026 17m 5m saved
With Josh Glessing, President of the Milwaukee Bucks
Every Milwaukee Bucks game will be on free over-the-air television across Wisconsin this season, which Josh Glessing said is the first time in 30 years.
That is not a strategy the team chose. The regional sports network that had been paying the Bucks a guaranteed rights fee stopped, and a business that had been sold once a year to one buyer is now sold in advertising slots.
"We are in the ad sales business in a way that we haven't been before."
Glessing took the president's job in January, came to it from Haslam Sports Group and before that Goldman Sachs, grew up 30 minutes south of Milwaukee, and has spent his first nine months losing a franchise player and rebuilding how the team is watched and paid for. He spoke to Romaine Bostick on Bloomberg Talks.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 17 minutes of audio, 12 minutes of reading.
Here are the 9 takeaways that matter.
Key Takeaways
Every game is free over the air in Wisconsin, a first in 30 years, after the regional sports network stopped paying The rights fee was guaranteed; advertising revenue is not
The team is producing its own games for the first time, alongside the league
The new jersey patch is the club's largest partner, and a bigger deal than the Motorola one it replaces The buyer is Uline, a packaging and shipping business about 20 minutes from the arena
Ticket packages start at $150 for 10 games, which works out at $15 a seat
Losing Giannis did not change the patch negotiation, on Glessing's account
Eight or nine of the last NBA championships went to different teams, which is his answer on mid-market viability
A coach, not a superstar, is what he takes from the Knicks' title run
Sports finance barely existed when he left Goldman — no Arctos, no Ares in sports assets
No owner he has met came in to make money, in his telling; they came in to win
1. The Uline Patch
The news Glessing came on to make is a multi-year jersey patch deal with Uline, the Wisconsin packaging company, starting this season.
Where the logo goes, and for how long
A month from today, we'll tip off the season on the road at Washington, and we're going to do that representing Wisconsin-based company Uline as our new jersey patch partner. So we're going to wear them for every regular season game, every playoff game, on our practice jersey, on our summer league jerseys.
Josh Glessing
What that makes them to the club
they will become our biggest and largest partner, and we're incredibly excited to announce that today
Josh Glessing
Uline was already a Bucks partner, so this is an upgrade rather than a new relationship, and Glessing said that matters commercially.
Why an existing partner is easier to expand
These partnerships where you have a relationship, They're the best. We get a running start. We know exactly how to work together. We know how to communicate.
Josh Glessing
He also disclosed a personal connection: his sister works at the company.
2. Why A B2B Sponsor
Bostick pushed on the choice. The Bucks' previous patch was Motorola, and the club has worked with Harley-Davidson — consumer brands a fan in the arena already knows. Uline sells packaging to businesses. Why should a fan care what it is?
Glessing's answer was that the business-to-consumer side is bigger than the question assumes, and that the catalog is the reason.
The company he is describing
they are the global leader in packaging, shipping, industrial materials and packaging
Josh Glessing
He made the case as a customer rather than as an executive, saying he uses the 900-page catalog himself, and put it alongside the other great Wisconsin mail-order publication of his childhood, the sneaker catalog out of Wausau.
3. Keeping It Wisconsin
Bostick noted that Uline is headquartered about a 20-minute drive from the arena, and that other Bucks partners are Wisconsin companies too, Sargento among them. He asked whether keeping sponsorship local is deliberate.
Glessing said the club sells to companies all over the world and named a German-headquartered partner with a large Wisconsin manufacturing presence as an example. What a local partner buys, on his account, is a shared workforce and a shared community.
The three things he says a partnership has to do
we want to obviously win on the court. We want to take great care of our fans, and we want to give back to the community
Josh Glessing
Employee engagement is the piece he says the local companies deliver that a global one cannot, because the two workforces are in the same place.
4. Bigger Than Motorola
Bostick asked for the economics. Glessing would not give a number, but he gave a comparison, which for a market that tracks patch deals is the more useful disclosure.
The only figure he would characterize
What I'll say about it's our largest patch deal to date.
Josh Glessing
And confirmation of the benchmark
It's bigger than the Motorola deal.
Josh Glessing
The deal is not confined to the jersey either. Glessing said the partnership activates inside the arena in several ways and that the brand will keep expanding across what a fan sees in the building and on television.
5. Life Without Giannis
Bostick put the hard question directly: Giannis Antetokounmpo was traded to Miami in June along with Bobby Portis, Glessing had only been in the job since January, and the patch deal was signed after all of it. Did losing the franchise player affect the negotiation?
Glessing said no, and made the argument that the asset is the building and the league rather than any one player.
What he says the platform actually is
The platform that the Milwaukee Bucks have locally with the Fiserv Forum, which, objectively is the best arena in the NBA, and the global platform that the NBA gives us, it's so much bigger than just one player.
Josh Glessing
The roster answer is young players and the trade return: Brayden Burries and Nate Ament out of the draft, and what he called blue-chip young players coming back from Miami. Tyler Herro, a Milwaukee-area native, comes home in the deal, which Glessing noted alongside his own return to the state.
Bostick's follow-up was about global stature rather than production — Antetokounmpo was Greek-born with Nigerian heritage, playing in the largest economy in the world, and that reach is not replaced by a draft pick. Glessing separated wanting from needing, then pointed at how the current crop of stars were acquired.
Nobody knew what they were getting, in three cases
Remember, he was a mid-teens pick when he was drafted in the mid-teens, and no one thought that he was going to be what he played out to be. You've got other great recent MVP winners. Joker in Denver was a second-round pick. SGA was a throwaway player in a larger trade that was pretty much centered around one player and picks.
Josh Glessing
Bostick raised the historical parallel that Milwaukee fans raise themselves: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar brought the franchise its first championship and then left for Los Angeles. Glessing's interjection was that Abdul-Jabbar went on to win five more there.
His answer on whether a mid-market team can still compete was a distribution of outcomes rather than an assurance.
The parity argument, with a count
Eight or nine of the last NBA championships have been different championships. And you've had, quote unquote, middle market teams, OKC, the Bucks, Denver compete for championships.
Josh Glessing
He added that it was not until the Knicks broke through that a major market did, which is close to the opposite of the assumption in the question.
6. What The Knicks Proved
Asked what a Bucks president takes from the Knicks' title run, Glessing's answer was about coaching and front-office fit rather than about stars. The Knicks, he pointed out, did not look compelling a year earlier with most of the same players.
The variable he thinks changed
sometimes it's that perfect mix of a coach, a front office delivering on the vision that a coach has to ensure that the right. Pieces are in the right place
Josh Glessing
The part he admits cannot be modeled
And these things evolve and change and chemistry is a real thing. You can't quantify it, but it when you see it.
Josh Glessing
He credited the Knicks' leadership under Mike Brown, and said Milwaukee brought in Taylor Jenkins this offseason, who he described as the most sought-after coach available.
On the business consequences of the trade, Glessing was explicit about the order of decision-making, which is the answer a sponsor or a ticket buyer would want on the record.
Basketball decisions are not made against the revenue line
we don't lead with what is the impact of this on ticket prices? What is the impact of this on our jersey patch? We lead with do these decisions help us compete in the near and long term for championships?
Josh Glessing
7. $15 A Ticket
Bostick asked whether ticket prices had to be adjusted after losing two stars. Glessing described the ticketing business as an ecosystem that has to be handled carefully, then gave the actual pricing.
The entry point
We've got ticket packages starting at $150 for 10 tickets. That's $15. A ticket to ensure that everyone has access to the NBA, everyone has access to the Milwaukee Bucks.
Josh Glessing
The schedule helped: 16 games fall on Fridays and Sundays, which he called family-friendly and the ones his own children can attend. Combined with the television change, he makes an accessibility claim for the whole league.
The positioning he is claiming
We think we're the most accessible team in the NBA right now between ticket packages, and free over-the-air television this upcoming season.
Josh Glessing
8. The RSN Collapse
The most consequential business change in the interview is the one the club did not choose. Main Street shut down its regional sports network operations, and the Bucks' local media went from a guaranteed rights fee to free broadcast.
The scale of the change
First time in 30 years that we've delivered every single game for free over the air in the state of Wisconsin.
Josh Glessing
A year ago, he said, the team was locked into a deal to deliver its games on FanDuel and was not discussing over-the-air television at all. Bostick's reading was that free broadcast is a bridge to a future mix of over-the-air, streaming and direct-to-consumer, and Glessing did not dispute it — he said the league is publicly exploring what local media rights look like next and that he does not know what the 2027-28 season holds.
The revenue model underneath it is the part investors should note.
Guaranteed money replaced by advertising risk
We are in the ad sales business in a way that we haven't been before.
Josh Glessing
He described the old arrangement plainly: the network paid a rights fee and then had to make the economics work on its own side, and for Main Street it did not. One compensation is control — the Bucks are producing their own games for the first time, in conjunction with the league.
On Adam Silver's push toward more centralized control of local direct-to-consumer rights, Glessing set out the two tests rather than taking a side.
What the league has to solve for
The economics have to work, but the distribution also has to work. So you can't make one of those decisions without the other.
Josh Glessing
Asked whether teams need local control in whatever comes next, he said yes, and described a range of possible outcomes from every game accessible to a portion of games. He also dated the whole problem: on his first day in January nobody was solving for how to deliver next season's games, and then the St. Louis Cardinals reported problems with their payments from Main Street.
How fast it arrived
And very quickly, we're in the local media rights business in a way that we haven't been before.
Josh Glessing
9. From Goldman To The Bucks
Bostick asked how running a team differs from the finance side of sports, where Glessing spent his career. His answer was that the two have converged, and he dated that too.
What did not exist when he left the bank
Remember, before working for the Haslam family at Haslam Sports Group, I was at Goldman. And we were the center of the sports finance universe. If there was a real sports finance transaction going on, we were likely at the center of it. And when I left, Arctos didn't exist. Ares wasn't investing in sports assets.
Josh Glessing
He named the two exceptions who were early: Providence Equity in Major League Soccer's commercial arm, and CVC in Formula One.
Bostick's last line of questioning was the one that follows from all of it. If the Dallas Cowboys can be among the most valuable sports businesses in the world without a championship in decades, does a team still need to win?
Glessing separated the leagues first. Baseball, the NFL and the NBA have different economics, he said, and the NFL aggregated its advantages 30 or 40 years ago. Then he answered about owners rather than about returns.
His claim about who is buying teams
I don't think there's a single owner that I've interacted with that has come into any of the leagues in the last 20 plus years who have come in saying explicitly, we're here to make money. They're all here to win.
Josh Glessing
He ran through the Bulls, the Knicks, the Spurs and the incoming groups at the Lakers and Minnesota as examples of the same thing, and said he could say it unequivocally even of owners he does not know.
Bonus Insights
The feedback loop on a franchise trade
Glessing grew up in Racine, 30 minutes south of Milwaukee, and has been a Bucks fan his whole life, which he says gives the job an unusual property: his own relatives are his focus group.
Listen, I've got direct family relatives who had real questions with real expletives after the honest trade. So I get very real-time feedback.
Josh Glessing
The promise he would make
Asked what he could promise fans, Glessing did not promise wins. He promised effort, and named the building.
no one's going to leave Fiserv Forum this season and say those guys didn't give it everything and they didn't compete because we're going to compete every single day
Josh Glessing
Glessing's bottom line is that a mid-market NBA team is now a media and sponsorship business first: the largest partner in club history is a packaging catalog from up the road, the guaranteed television money has been replaced by advertising the team sells itself, and the argument for buying a ticket is parity and price rather than a superstar.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Milwaukee Bucks (The club: new jersey patch, $150 ten-game ticket packages, every game free over the air in Wisconsin, and a roster rebuilt around draft picks and the Miami trade return)
Uline (The new jersey patch partner and now the Bucks' largest; a Wisconsin packaging, shipping and industrial materials business about 20 minutes from the arena, known for its 900-page catalog)
Motorola (The previous patch partner, and the benchmark Glessing says the Uline deal exceeds)
Harley-Davidson and Sargento (The consumer-brand Wisconsin partners Bostick contrasted with a business-to-business sponsor)
Fiserv Forum (The arena Glessing calls objectively the best in the NBA, and the platform he says outlasts any one player)
NBA (The global platform he credits, and the body now exploring what local media rights look like under Adam Silver)
FanDuel (Where the Bucks' games were contracted to appear a year ago, under the Main Street deal that has since collapsed)
Arctos and Ares Management (Neither existed in sports investing when Glessing left Goldman; his marker for how fast the asset class formed)
Providence Equity and CVC Capital Partners (The two he names as early movers, in Major League Soccer's commercial arm and in Formula One)
Goldman Sachs and Haslam Sports Group (His two previous employers, and the reason he dates the growth of sports finance from the inside)
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