Peter Robert Casey is CEO of JDS Sports, a sports and entertainment holding company investing at ‘the intersection of content & commerce.’ At JDS Sports, Peter and his team provide capital, connections, and strategic guidance while working alongside founders and their teams from startup to profit to scale. Devoted to being hands-on, Peter doesn’t just write checks; he gets in the trenches. Over the last four years, Peter has helped turn around multiple businesses, and has invested in more than 25 startups across media, DTC e-commerce, and web3 technologies. He is a servant leader driven by faith, family, and helping startup founders realize their dreams.

Before co-founding JDS Sports, Peter built online communities for some of the most iconic brands in sports including Nike Basketball. He was the first media-credentialed microblogger in college basketball history, a role born out of his passion for the sport that launched his career into the stratosphere and earned him speaking engagements and a full-time job with the New York Knicks.
Read the show notes here: https://bwmissions.com/one-away-podcast/

TRANSCRIPT:

BRYAN WISH: Welcome to the One Away show. What’s your One Away moment that you want to share?

PETER ROBERT CASEY: It goes back to childhood. I was born and raised in the southeast end of Brooklyn, Marine Park. Very blue collar, working class neighborhood. I was fortunate enough, in Brooklyn, to have an actual yard. A very tiny one. It was like the size of a postage stamp but in that yard, we had a basketball hoop. It takes me back, January ’91. Unfortunately, the day after Super Bowl Sunday, my sister did not wake up for school that morning. She did abruptly and unexpectedly of heart virus, myocarditis which is something we’re hearing about a lot today both as a symptom of Covid, having the virus, and also some of the vaccines unfortunately. At the time, nobody knew much about it.

Baseball was probably my first love but through her passing and me not wanting – I was 9 years old and she was 10 – to deal with trauma like that at a young age was not something I wanted to revisit or kind of talk about especially even with counselors. Funny enough, basketball became this outlet for me that I could kind of escape from that reality and I fell in love with the game at a young age. Just the practice of getting better at the game, being able to play it in a solitary way, but also as a team sport. Little did I know that basketball would become the through-line for my entire career. A passion first. Something I love and there’s a lot of connective tissue back to that moment. Yeah, I’d say that’s the One Away moment that has shaped not only my career but most of my friendships. If you look at my wedding party, it was former teammates at the high school and college level. A lot of my best friends and relationships to this day were stemmed through playing basketball. 

BRYAN WISH: Wow. What an honor for you to share such a meaningful, formative time in your life. To honor your sister perhaps, just describe her and who she was. 

PETER ROBERT CASEY: We were Irish twins. We were 11 months apart. There was always a period of one week where we were actually the same age. We were very close in age. Therefore, grade levels and had shared friends. Her name was Christine Casey but we called her Tina. She was a character. She took on a lot of my mom’s characteristics. Very social. She played sports only to socialize. Whereas, I was very serious about competition and what not. She did not like competition at all. Even board games, when I was winning, half way through she would just not want to play anymore. Not because she was losing but just because she lost interest. She wasn’t a competitive person. She was the most generous, young girl that you could imagine. I was a very selfish kid. Unfortunately, when you become an only child through that, that even compounded in my life. I’m just starting to reflect on her personality and trying to integrate that selflessness that she had into my own career and being which is tough. She wanted to be a teacher.

She used to have a fictitious class down in the basement. She’d have this imaginary class that she’d teach. I always thought it was hilarious because I’m like, “What are you doing?” She would escape. She had my mom’s high heels on which were five sizes, ten sizes too big. She’d dress up. Funny enough, when I was playing hoops in the yard, we’d have to share the yard. My dad would be like, “It’s her turn to play with her fake class.” She’d come outside and I’d have to go inside. I remember being very aggravated by that. She was a very sweet kid. I wish I took on a lot more of the qualities that she had. To me, it’s important to honor her through my work. I try to embody some of the things that she stood for at a young age. 

BRYAN WISH: What an impression to see at a young age in someone so selfless when you were in your own brain and had to make as many buckets as you could in the backyard. It’s great to hear how she shaped you as a person in what you recognized to be gifts in her. Tell us about basketball. You mentioned it was an escape. I can resonate a lot with that especially from middle school to high school and post-high school, in some ways. What about the game really drew you? 

PETER ROBERT CASEY: I think it’s a few things. You can practice the sport by yourself and actually get better. Baseball, you needed at least a pitcher or second person to practice anything. Having a yard and being able to go out and hone your skills. Also, use your imagination. Ten seconds left and you’re kind of just repeating something you watched on TV the night before of some of your favorite players. That aspect of continuously being able to get better on your own. On the flipside, it’s a team sport. All the values from life come into fruition with basketball. Everything from selflessness. You’re part of a team. You basically have to sacrifice and make a commitment to that team, showing up to practice, playing a specific role on the team. You might not always be the star. A lot of these values is actually a book Bill Bradley wrote. He played at Princeton, was a former senator, about values of the game. A lot of those come to life through the game of basketball that transcend beyond the sport into life afterwards when you’re working for a company. I just love those facets of the game. Then just the athleticism that you can see. I wasn’t fortunate to have it but basketball is a beautiful game with teamwork and the grace that players have with their athleticism whether it’s soaring through the air or even defensively being able to stay in front of someone takes such skill and grit. 

BRYAN WISH: Where did you hone your craft specifically?

PETER ROBERT CASEY: I was a 5’11, two steps too slow point guard. The nature of my height. I had a fairly decent handle and not so great jump shot. Obviously, too slow to keep Division 1 point guards out of the paint. I knew my role. I have two mor quick One Away moments that sort of tie to how I got here through the game of basketball. When my sister died in ’91, she died in the house and my parents were traumatized. They wanted to not only get out of the house but almost do a reset and move out of the area. We moved upstate New York. This was Summer of ’93. Only six months after that move – it’s hard. You move out of Brooklyn. You go to rural New York where it’s cow town and you need a driver’s license and I wasn’t of age to drive yet. That first winter storm upstate, my mom went food shopping and asked what I wanted. I probably said junk food, soda. We were playing Bulls vs Blazers on Sega Genesis. She brought home Slam magazine, like the very first issue which ties to where I am today. I fell in love with it at a very young age. It made such an impression on me because it spoke the real voice of basketball culture. It was the first of its kind. Then I realized when I was not going to be a pro-basketball player in high school, I went to this five-star basketball camp which is also in our portfolio as one of the companies we own and operate. It was there that I realized I needed to focus on academics and have a plan B in life. Those are two more One Away moments that tie back to hoops and my current story. 

BRYAN WISH: The Slam magazine. Your mom clearly recognized your love for the game. You found an outlet in the game. When you read that magazine, what drew you? Why do you remember that so vividly?

PETER ROBERT CASEY: At the time, from a basketball specific perspective, there was Inside Stuff which was the NBA kind of magazine and then Hoop which is a more stuffier publication. They were just very vanilla in their coverage of the league. They took no risks. Whereas, Slam, the DNA of the brand was the interaction of hip-hop and basketball. This was 1994. This was before the internet as we know it. So Slam was where you discovered the next footwear that basketball players were wearing or should be wearing. What are the brands that were coming of age that we should keep an eye on? Who were the players? They had Stephon Marbury who was a high school junior at the time as their first high school diarist who wrote like a monthly column on what it was like to be an all-American. You’d find out about these players that later went onto college and then the pros that became significant. It was a discovery platform in print. It was authentic in its voice; where I felt Hoop and Inside Stuff went through some filtration system where corporate America had to edit it down. It was really to serve sponsors vs to serve people who love the game. That was the core difference. 

BRYAN WISH: I’m seeing the thread line that you discussed about how it was so connected from childhood onward. You played in high school. You played in college?

PETER ROBERT CASEY: One year Division 3 basketball in college.

BRYAN WISH: When you were in college, how were you thinking about the trajectory of your career?

PETER ROBERT CASEY: In college, I knew I wasn’t going to be playing at any bigger level professionally beyond Division 3 basketball. Those kind of dreams were put over here but my love for the game endured. Function of being a single sport athlete, you sort of burnout. That’s one of the risks starting at a young age. By the end of my freshman year, I was ready to try other things. I felt I became so one-dimensional as a human. Basketball occupied every minute of every day that I just wanted to focus on academics and other things. I was already committed to pursuing a career in business. My major was business. Finance was the minor. I started going deep down that rabbit hole of Wallstreet and different opportunities around finance. Basketball started becoming secondary from a focus standpoint as far as a career path. That’s where my head was at as a college freshman. 

BRYAN WISH: I want to tap into that feeling of one dimensionality. Was that something inside where you were just like, “I need to expand and evolve my interests?” I think that’s really important at the early part of your career to not get so locked in tunnel vision. It can serve you to a degree but I think it can hinder you to a degree. What made you realize you needed to explore and go beyond?

PETER ROBERT CASEY: It was two things. I think I had picked the wrong school because I picked it purely based on basketball. Neither of my parents went to college. This was such a new dimension of going off to college and how do you choose a college? They empowered me to make that decision which was great but I was 18 and kind of clueless about that. I picked it based on where I’d perform best on a basketball standpoint. RPI is where I went. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is up in Troy, New York. I didn’t really care for the social environment. It was a very technical college. It was seven miles east of Albany which was a little too far. Troy isn’t one of my bucket list destinations. From a social fit, it was off. I loved the basketball team but I lost interest in focusing on that entirely at that age. I wanted a reset of my own. I not only retired from hoops but I also ended up transferring schools. I ended up finishing at a state school, SUNY Oneonta ultimately. I didn’t play the rest of my years of college. I just wanted to explore different options. It wasn’t so much of me reflecting like I’m becoming one dimensional. It was more of, “I want to try other things.”

BRYAN WISH: I hung out with some of the athletes at University of Georgia and you could see so much of their identity was wrapped into the sport. You see a lot of pro athletes, when they’re done, “What do I do now?” It was probably a blessing in disguise that happened to you earlier than later. When I first met you, I remember there was this element of authentic hustle to you. You kind of always possessed the joy of life. Where do you think your drive comes from? 

PETER ROBERT CASEY: It’s probably a few things. One, my father’s father had amazing work ethic. Watching and observing that as a child. Never punching out for work. Never calling in sick. As I got older, my faith started to form a lot of my work ethic. To me, in the bible, “Work as if you’re working for the Lord.” There’s dignity in work. I believe we’re made in God’s image and everything He does is excellence. That standard becomes the standard. I think the third thing that shapes it – I developed an obsessive compulsive disorder when my sister passed as well. Just rituals. Mostly cleaning and organizing but it creates this rigidity that drives this cycle of work ethic as well. It kind of accelerates all of that. I think it’s a function of those three things. One is observing and watching it from my own family. Two is my faith. Three would be this OCD which is a double edged sword. At some point, it has its strengths and I know how to harness the strengths and try to now mitigate some of the weaknesses. 

BRYAN WISH: You’ve talked about basketball. It stemmed from your sister. It led to high school Slam magazine and your interest in seeing the culture of sports. It developed further interests beyond basketball because you realized you were one dimensional. Take us to when you graduate. What’s next?

PETER ROBERT CASEY: I majored in business but as I got through my college career, I started getting very active in student affairs at the college. I’d work student orientation in the summer. Admitted student weekends when families would come and students got accepted to the college. I’d give tours of the university. My first five years after graduating undergrad, I worked at Columbia University at their teachers’ college. It’s the graduate school of education. I was an assistant director of student activities and programs. My role was to build community in the brick and mortar sense which was everything from managing all student activities and programs, all the student organizations, professional development opportunities, and then cultural experiences because the school was in New York City and there’s just so much things you can do whether it was Broadway shows or going to museums or taking students to a ball game which is how I met my wife at Yankee Stadium. It was really building community in that sense. These were mostly non-traditional students. They had day jobs and were going to school at night. That was part one.

BRYAN WISH: You’ve had that community sense to you since we’ve met. Building community is so foundational to everything you’ve done. What did you learn in those five years of bringing people together and organizing student programs?

PETER ROBERT CASEY: Th first piece was it revolves around a common or shared interest or passion. That’s what brings people together. The second thing is it requires leadership. Someone has to facilitate this community or get it rolling off the ground before the community self-governs or runs itself. That involves communication. Those are the three facets that jump to mind to keep the community going. Back then, it was email. This was 2005-2010. There was no Slack or anything like that. People go together around things they enjoyed or wanted to talk about or learn more about. 

BRYAN WISH: Community, leadership, and shared vision. Love it. 

PETER ROBERT CASEY: I did a Master’s degree at Columbia too while I was working there. I finished that degree unfortunately in May 2008 which was right in the heart of the great recession. There were no jobs but luckily, I still had a day job. I started getting a pull towards basketball again. This first love. How do you translate experience working in higher ed to working in the business side of basketball? That was a fundamental challenge. 

BRYAN WISH: How did you go about that?

PETER ROBERT CASEY: It involved taking on some risk and just exploring and learning. I launched a Twitter account in October 2008 and blog simultaneously. In real-time, there were all these new social media tools. At the time, it was Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. I was looking at these new tools beyond just the utility of connecting with old classmates and staying in touch with family members and friends. I was exploring, how can these tools be used to build online community and be a utility for the business side of sports or basketball specifically? I took all the principles we just talked about of my work at Columbia building community in the brick and mortar sense and I was trying to figure out, how do you apply these in a digital online sense? A lot of them just translated. It was just the technology that changed. I did that for a full year.

The irony was I was early on Twitter, at least from sports business being there. This was like Shaq might have had an account in 2008 and some other folks. I met the sports information director at St. John’s which is the team I grew up following from a basketball perspective. We hashed out an idea where he gave me a press credential to cover the St. John’s basketball team on my Twitter account. This is at a time when sports journalists weren’t using the tool at all. It was probably right place, right time because it turned into a national news story on ESPN and Sports Illustrated and then the New York Times. It was a unique way to use Twitter in 2009. That led to the New York Knicks reading that article in the Sunday Times and then reaching out and inviting me to speak on a panel alongside Jack Dorsey who founded Twitter. I think my 29th birthday, on the marquee outside the garden is my face plastered next to Jack Dorsey. Before a game, he was speaking about how he came up with the idea of Twitter in the early days of building it. I was sharing how I used Twitter to cover the men’s basketball team at St. John’s. That was kind of the breakthrough moment. Another One Away moment. 

BRYAN WISH: That’s fascinating. Going back to the game you covered at St. John’s, give us some more behind the scenes. Was that the first time you ever covered a game? Was it pretty instinctual?

PETER ROBERT CASEY: Twitter was three years old at the time and they didn’t even have native photo or video capabilities. You had to use Twitpic and Twitvid which were third party tools. But the philosophy going into the whole season was, “What could I show that the broadcast won’t? What are the soundbites? The behind the scenes that give St. John’s fans a unique perspective?” All the newspaper writers focused on was writing their story so they could send it to the editor at the final buzzer to get out there. I didn’t have the pressure of having to write a game log or a story at all. It was just about real time which is Twitter’s strength, as we all know. It’s a real-time communication platform. Whether it was pre-game warmups or the post-game press conference with the team, I was the first one sharing these soundbites out there because everyone was jotting them down or recording them on audio to them put into a game story that didn’t come out until the next morning or that night. It gave a huge advantage to add context around the game beyond what you could see on the broadcast.

BRYAN WISH: You were very proactive in seeing the utility value to business and sports. With that proactive level of thinking, right place, right time, you also saw the wave coming and got in front of it.

PETER ROBERT CASEY: I was also trying to solve a problem. I worked in higher ed and my skills on paper, how do you translate working in higher ed to working for a team or a league or a brand in sports? To make that connection was so hard. When I was applying for jobs, I feel my resume kept going into an abyss. It was very difficult to thread that needle. I was trying to solve a problem of, “I need a different way to break into sports.” That was the impetus to create the blog and the Twitter account. It wasn’t so much of a curiosity but more of me trying to solve a personal problem. But the curiosity really engaged me because I did see the value in the tools. That kept it going for a year. 

BRYAN WISH: The tools served as a way for you to create your own niche and break through. Sports is extremely hard to break into as it is. You have to differentiate. Take us to when the Times article was released. 

PETER ROBERT CASEY: I was a Sunday. They call it a 30-second timeout. It was a big column by Ken Belson. Q&A. 

BRYAN WISH: What did that feel like for you?

PETER ROBERT CASEY: It was weird because I still have my day job. One of the deans or provosts at the college came into my office. I didn’t tell my employer that I was doing all this fun stuff on the side. He happened to be a Villanova fan which is in the same conference. He was enthusiastic about it. Funny enough, six months after the speaking engagement, the Knicks called me and hired me to be their first in-house social media strategist. It led to my first full-time opportunity directly but at the time, I didn’t see that. I thought it was nice coverage. It was probably more powerful than having a resume just because it was unique enough and stood out. 

BRYAN WISH: It’s incredible. You were at the very frontlines of social. Basketball, business, the intersection of the two – it’s really compounded for you over the last 13-14 years. What have been some of the most exciting opportunities, the exciting things that you’ve been able to build and be a part of as a result of this interest in basketball, business, and also utilizing these tools to drive community and effective change?

PETER ROBERT CASEY: The St. John’s opportunity was awesome for me because it opened that door. I’ll always be thankful for Mark Fredo for allowing me to do that and giving me a platform to cover the team. With the Knicks, we launched Knicks Now at the time which was a microblogging, microcontent platform ahead of its time that we integrated with the site. It was all short snippets, soundbites, audio/video/photo. It was ahead of its time too. This was 2010 we were launching that platform internally which got copied throughout the league thereafter. They were very visionary on that front. When I left there, I went to go work agency side on Nike basketball. I was part of the team that helped launch Nike basketball in Instagram in 2012 which happened to be an Olympic year. I got to work on the 2012 Olympics and how Nike basketball shows up from a content/storytelling perspective there.

We were also early in the days of integrating and to NBA 2K. I got to write all of the copy for the Nike tech as it showed up in the game and the welcome letter when you earned the shoe contract within the game. From that to Kobe Bryant. He was known as anti-social Kobe. He started becoming curious. His first kind of entry into that world was taking over Nike basketball’s Twitter account before he launched his own. It was part of that. It also happened to be his 7th anniversary of his 81-point game and after he took over our account, the next activation with him was live tweeting on the anniversary of his 81-point game from his perspective which was another new kind of vantage point that Twitter offered the audience. Just tons of big opportunities and campaigns from that side that kind of shaped my early career. 

BRYAN WISH: That’s being put on a pretty big pedestal right out of the gate. You were also doing something so new and these brands and teams were trying to figure out the best way into the world. You kind of had a lead in the race in a way where they could look to you to say, “How do we do this?”

PETER ROBERT CASEY: Not me so much as the organizations have in the foresight to get on it early and just being a part of the teams. Like the leadership at the Knicks were thinking about this. I became one of the hires and the same with the Nike basketball side. It was the brands and the teams that had this vision early, that got it, that wanted to take that risk and be early and show up early. I was fortunate enough to play on those teams at a young age. 

BRYAN WISH: From being around Nike and Nike storytelling, being around some of these athletes who play at the highest level, what memories were extremely formative? 

PETER ROBERT CASEY: One memory that’s funny is when Carmelo Anthony was traded to the Knicks. It was kind of a coming home of sorts. I was at the practice facility. Practice was going on. Then the news broke and I got a text on my Blackberry which will bring you back, “Hey, we need you to go to Teterboro Airport tonight after work and meet Carmelo, La La, and the family.” That stood out. I just remember it being frigid cold and it’s a private airport. No media was allowed on the premise but since I worked for the team, they let me go in. From that moment of him and the family arriving and the excitement and curiosity, to that game when they announced Carmelo for starting lineups. They played that Coming Home anthem. I still get chills every time I hear it. It became a MSG commercial. Everything I hear that Diddy song Coming Home, I still get chills because it brings me back to the airport meeting Carmelo and that game when he played the first time in the orange and blue. 

BRYAN WISH: It’s funny how some music can bring you back to moments in time. 

PETER ROBERT CASEY: Nostalgia trigger, for sure. 

BRYAN WISH: As things progressed, you had a pretty big role with Five Star Basketball. Tell us about that. 

PETER ROBERT CASEY: I went to Five Star for three summers – ’96-’98. All the way to me as a rising senior. It was formative in the fact that at the time I probably didn’t like it but as an adult and a father now, looking back, what Five Star did was basically a hyper focus on instruction and truly helping players get better. Most basketball camps at the time throw the balls out. It was all about competition and exposure. You got both of those at Five Star but they were secondary to teaching and learning the game the right way. It just had this competitive, intense atmosphere that the caliber of competition brought but the staff, the counselors, the coaches.

Five Star, we’re working on a narrative podcast right now. A six-episode narrative podcast about the impact that Five Star had on multiple generations uninterrupted. Lebron’s Production Company. Five Star produced over 325 coaches that went on from high school to the D1 or MBA ranks. Frank Vogel, Brad Stevens. Hubie Brown was at the first camp session. John Calipari, Rick Pitino. Endless amount of big name coaches that came through Five Star that started their careers there. It’s basically an incubator for coaching talent. Then over 500 NBA players and 10,000 Division 1 players went to this camp. Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Kevin Durant, on and on. All these generations of players have this shared experience of this in the middle of the boon docks bootcamp. I always had a sentimental connection to the brand and the camp and I met the gentleman who owned it. I got to work for Five Star initially in 2011 and then Five Star became the starter portfolio companies that we ended up ultimately building JDS around. Five Star and Slam being the other ones. Two of these brands, these iconic brands that I mentioned earlier had an impact on my adolescence, both reading the magazine and going to the camp and realizing I need a plan B in life to come full circle to be able to work in and around them day-to-day is a tremendous opportunity. 

BRYAN WISH: Childhood dreams coming to life. What does your role look like within helping shape these brands and keeping that authentic spirit that you so cherished?

PETER ROBERT CASEY: Just to give some more background – JDS Sports is a holding company. We do a mix of both private equity where we own and operate businesses and Five Star and Slam are two examples of that. We also do a bunch of venture style investing where we’ll participate in seed rounds and series A rounds for some other investments. The whole premise and idea of building JDS was to surround Slam and Five Star with complimentary businesses that we could help one another grow. That was the origin of JDS being formed in late ’17 going into 2018. My role is multi-faceted. It’s identifying and sourcing opportunities to invest in.

Two is we don’t just provide capitol. We’re a strategic investor. Everything from connection to guidance and helping companies go from startup to profit to ultimately scaling and potentially even exiting their businesses. We’re there with them every step of the way. We don’t just write a check and get out of the way. We like to roll up our sleeves and get in the trenches and work alongside founders and their teams to help build their companies. We’re operators at heart and that’s kind of our competitive advantage. Because we focus on this intersection of commerce and content and we always say the nexus point between those things is community. We really look for companies, brands, and startups that understand the value and strength of community and lean into it. Those are the opportunities that we really look for. Our role, as operators, is after the investment is made, that’s when the real work actually begins. It’s not like we just monitor how the companies are doing. How do we help key hires, fundraising, strategy, business development for these companies. It’s a lot. That’s what gets us excited. 

BRYAN WISH: Absolutely. You said something that was really interesting. It remind me of someone I know. You invest in a lot of the companies in a similar way that stack the chips in favor of making the whole portfolio successful. What does that look like? How have you built out some of these investments to what you can share publicly?

PETER ROBERT CASEY: A good example of it is we launched a sister studio to Slam that focuses on longform content. The reason we stood up a separate entity is for longform content, the budgets are much bigger and the timelines are much longer. It’s called RTG Features. RTG stands for Respect The Game. It was the original mantra of Slam. Our first project was very intentional. It was called A Kid from Coney Island and it’s a documentary about the rise, fall, and rebirth of Stephon Marbury’s career. I mentioned this earlier. Stephon Marbury, the first year that Slam was in existence was the first high school diarist in the magazine. He comes from our backyard here in New York City. Coney Island is a neighborhood in Brooklyn. He was on five covers. In that through line of authenticity, that felt like the perfect jumping-off point to get behind this project. We did multiple things where we brought all of our portfolio companies together to create this 1+1=6.

One was we attached Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman as EPs. Bringing in talent to help elevate this project to an even higher level. KD being in Brooklyn playing for the Nets felt authentic there. 1091 Pictures which is a portfolio company of ours is a film distributor. They lit up that film title on all the rental and transactional platforms. Netflix bought it for a multi-year period. It streams there exclusively from an SVOD perspective but through 1091, we were able to light it up on everywhere from iTunes to Amazon to airlines and things of that nature. Then the power of Slam. How do we market and promote this and really drive it? There was a little bit of luck. When the pandemic hit and everything went into lockdown, people wanted to watch things at home. We sped up the digital release of the title. Slam getting behind it, it had a spread in the magazine, on the website platform, through our newsletter. We were able to create all this supplementary content to really market and promote and amplify this story. There’s even on more touchpoint. The advertisements we used to drive and tune into the transactional platforms was created by VidMob which is another portfolio companies of ours. You talk about who would bring our universe at JDS together to give us an unfair advantage, that’s like a clear example of that coming to life. 

BRYAN WISH: It feels so integrated and also aligned in a way that’s intentional and done with care and thoughtfulness. What excites you most about the future?

PETER ROBERT CASEY: We’re very bullish on this evolution of the internet, Web 3.0. Like Web 2.0 which is funny how I got my start in this career became the social web but Web 2.0 is very flat and very link based. Two-dimensional. We think Web 3.0 is going to be very participatory, 3-dimensional. To bring it all full circle, where the community actually starts owning the platform. Not just participating and showing up as a consumer but actually being owner of the actual platform. We’re starting to see it right now with blockchain enabling this whole entire ecosystem. We’re still in the first inning of it right now but the long term play here is the metaverse and how the internet becomes very much 3-dimensional and you show up in it and not just with your keyboard but actually as an avatar, as a personality, as an identity. We’re very bullish on that. That could be anywhere from 3-7 years out. That’s where we see the space going and sports and entertainment will show up in various ways. 

BRYAN WISH: Where can people find you if they’re building a company within your space?
PETER ROBERT CASEY: The best place is our website JDSsports.co. On IG, JDS.sports.