From DEI to the Gridiron: Douglas Freeman’s Vision for a New Kind of Sports League – ep.177

In this episode, Melyssa Barrett sits down with serial entrepreneur and DEI leader Douglas Freeman, the founder of the Entertainment Football League Association (ENTFLA) — a groundbreaking Black-owned indoor football league redefining what it means to blend sports, entertainment, equity, and economic impact.

Freeman shares the journey from boardrooms and billion-dollar DEI programs to launching a next-generation sports league designed to uplift communities, create global investment opportunities, and develop talent on and off the field. From post-game concerts and Golden Tryouts to financial literacy academies and regional expansion, ENTFLA is on track to change the game — literally.

With a vision to build 30 teams by 2030, ENTFLA is bringing high-energy football and community transformation to “sports deserts” across the U.S. and beyond. Tune in to hear how Freeman is building a profitable, inclusive, and scalable model — one touchdown at a time.

🎯 Topics Covered:

  •  The “junk to jewel” mindset behind Freeman’s leadership

  •  The business model that makes ENTFLA profitable from day one

  •  Creating access for Black athletes, coaches, and investors

  •  Merging entertainment, tech, fashion, and global expansion

  •  Why ENTFLA is about more than football — it’s about equity

 🏈 Learn more: www.entfla.com

Melyssa Barrett: Welcome to the Jali Podcast. I’m your host, Melyssa Barrett. This podcast is for those who are interested in the conversation around equity, diversity, and inclusion. Each week I’ll be interviewing a guest who has something special to share or is actively part of building solutions in the space. Let’s get started. Douglas C. Freeman is an African-American entrepreneur, strategist and advocate for inclusive leadership who is now bringing equity and access to communities often overlooked in professional sports. As founder of the Entertainment Football Association, Doug is pioneering a new model of indoor football that fuses high energy sports with music culture and community engagement. Imagine a league built not just for fans, but for communities left off the sports map, a league where football, music and culture collide to bring opportunity, excitement, and economic growth to cities often overlooked. That’s the vision of Douglas C. Freeman, founder of the Entertainment Football Association, who’s turning sports deserts into sports destinations with pro level football, headline concerts, and a whole new way to experience game day from Harvard to uc, Berkeley. From Global Leadership Consulting to International Rugby, Doug is rewriting the playbook for equity and access in sports, and it all starts here. Last time I think we got together you were, I mean, you’re of course always an expert in DEI, but I know life has changed and the world has changed since we last talked, and so I can’t wait to hear what’s been going on for you both personally and professionally.

Douglas Freeman: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Guess personal is my daughter has graduated from high school.

Melyssa Barrett: Nice.

Douglas Freeman: And in a little over a week we’re going to LA because she’ll be a freshman at USC.

Melyssa Barrett: Nice. Oh my gosh, that’s awesome. A Trojan.

Douglas Freeman: Yeah, she’s going to be a Trojan. This is a dream school. She was on a dance intensive in LA Studio there when she was a sophomore. She did a tour of the camp and she fell in love and we said, Hey, back off, because it’s really, really, really hard now. And I think a lot of that is heavy East Coast. There’s so many of her and her friends that have that as a big choice. Now, maybe it wasn’t the case years ago, and so we were like, well, let’s just see. And went on tour with a fair number of schools in Northern Southern. She wanted to be in a warm location, bigger city kind of set up. So there were a few options that she applied to in LA and they did work out, but this was her big one. And she did get into uc, Berkeley Dad’s Alma water stuff. Nice. I was hoping it was one of her top twos, but she ultimately went,

Melyssa Barrett: Not the

Douglas Freeman: Climb,

Melyssa Barrett: Not too shabby.

Douglas Freeman: She busted her tail and we were very proud. So yeah, that’s a big life change.

Melyssa Barrett: Congratulations.

Douglas Freeman: Thank you. So I’m going to becoming a world of a hover parent because I’ll just show up in la.

Melyssa Barrett: Yes. Hang out for a while, see what she’s doing.

Douglas Freeman: Yeah, yeah. We have trackers on each other, so she’ll be like, no, you’re too close. Stay with her friends and hour away or something. So that’s the biggest personal,

Melyssa Barrett: That’s a big one.

Douglas Freeman: Yeah, that’s a big one. So excited for her, excited. Next steps. It’s just good that she’s happy. Anything you just want them happy and healthy and striving. So it seems like that’s all aligning some of my elements from diversity. But I did go to school at Cal after school. I love the Bay Area, wanted to stay forever, but a buddy of mine from Cal went to NYU Law school

Melyssa Barrett: And

Douglas Freeman: I visited for a weekend and I was like, I want to get an intern here. And the dorms were first come, first serve in the really nice, the law dorm, so I was able to get an internship at what’s now Verizon after college. Yeah. Oh wow. And so did that and then worked over at Chase Securities was our JP Morgan Chase and worked there as an investment banking financial analyst and turnarounds.

Melyssa Barrett: And

Douglas Freeman: That’s sort of my whole journey. People kind of call me the junk to jewelry guy because kind of look at these things that are overlooked and try to make a lot of value out of them. And so I went to grad school, came back, I worked at Deloitte Consulting, telecom media practice, then I went to a friend’s tech company, really internet company back in the late nineties. I was out of Oxford, England, and I was one of the four managers running the US office. We grew it to a million dollars in revenues. It’s a big metric for startups. Only about 1% or so startups make it to that level. And then we sold the company to a group division of Italy Telecom, say at pa, and we sold it for 375 million.

Melyssa Barrett: Wow. Nice.

Douglas Freeman: Yeah, it’s a great story. Linda knows what happened next. Well, my shares had invested, so

Melyssa Barrett: Oh my goodness.

Douglas Freeman: Yes. The founders retired and the rest of us are still working, shall we say. But had it not been for that, I wouldn’t have known You would’ve known Linda, because I met Linda through this group and at Comdex actually, and was able to work with Linda first in a small contract and worked for about four years from 2000 to 2004, which is an amazing experience. And we built Linda LED and built out, and I just supported the Visa supplier enrollment program and it generated all that money. And I think Linda said at the high point, it might’ve been over 600 million of program generated in you credits set with about maybe it was a couple million dollars in budget when all of a sudden done. So it had a very good rate. ROI 300 times I came back to New York, started my own boutique consulting firm in DEI after

Building out this diversity ROI model based on the supplier enrollment program. And I got four clients. I got a IG and I got a Deco Staffing North America, HSBC Bank and Sovereign Banks now Santander, and grew on my own, the organization to $1.2 million in three years. That was the first time I sweat equity, done seven figures growth myself. And I exited in 20 16, 20 17, went to Camarillo and worked as interim CHRO and first chief diversity officer for a billion dollar Medicare, Medicaid health plan and still had the bug to do entrepreneurship consulting. So I came back to New York vets in 2018 and launched world groups. I built out that consulting division in two and a half years to $1.8 million. And it was around that time that I was like, there’s just about life. Isn’t there more? And it can’t just be all the same stuff. And I looked around with friends and I was like, what do I have a passion for?

And friends where can provide something community and friends and family. And I’m a sports junk, I sports junk and admitted sports junkie. And I played rugby for eight years and was able to do so at a pretty solid level on the under 21 team. And briefly had a pro contract in Cardiff Wales at one of the biggest European leagues. So experienced that. That’s kind of cursing through my brain veins, excuse me, all the sports stuff. So I got, and all the growth trends are, you look at the data sports is growing globally. So we got a sports broker, looked at some league at some women’s base league, looked at major league rugby, looked at three middle lacrosse league and them really kind of doing fine and came across an indoor football team in Amarillo, Texas.

Melyssa Barrett: Oh wow.

Douglas Freeman: And I don’t know, Melyssa, if you’ve seen indoor arena football game either on television before. So it’s really cool. It’s played basically in a hockey arena.

Melyssa Barrett: Okay.

Douglas Freeman: So you take out the boards, take out the glass, you slap down a turf, it’s about 50 yards instead of a hundred, it’s about half the size. And it’s very intimate because it’s a smaller indoor setup. And so when I was at this town in Amarillo about a town of 300,000, the Pan Hill top of Texas and no arena of about 4,800 Saturday night, they had about 3000 fans. They turned off the lights, the DJ from Dallas pumped this music. They had the WWE flares, then a flatbed truck came under the field with ball girls throw it and we’re like, oh my goodness, what is going on? And then you see the players, Melyssa, these are just like the ones you see in NFL, the big, the fast. They come from all the top schools. They’re from Texas Tech and Texas and Alabama and UCLA and Oregon, Michigan, Yukon. And the scores are high. It’s like 70 to 65. It’s like a video game. And so when I went help listen at the third core to the concessions, ghost out, everyone’s watching the game.

Melyssa Barrett: Wow.

Douglas Freeman: I’m like, oh, this is amazing. So I did a test in 2022 and then flash forward to March of 2024, I brought on a big consultant, Tommy Benicio out of Dallas. And Tommy had started one of the first leagues, the indoor football league, and he had a profit first model and he built out any smaller Midwestern league business model, but with Tim Brown, NFL Hall of Famer. And he built it out on a profit first approach. And in 2024 when they went live, it was the only league in the country that eed out a little bit of profit. So we took that playbook. And so this junk to joy thing, what are we going to do? We love this. It’s tale of two cities, beautiful sport on the field, 40 years, horrible business operations off the field, right?

Melyssa Barrett: Yeah.

Douglas Freeman: So what are we going to do changes? Well number one, do research. And we found that centralized leagues tend to be more effective for emerging leagues. You run all this, it’s just shared services like corporate, you run everything. It’s smoother, it’s more efficient, it’s not siloed, share best practices, all that good stuff. So we centralize the league, which ultimately means two things. The league owns all the teams and the league operates all the team. Now the second thing is we had to build a strategy. And the strategy is really threefold. The three Gs like Gregory Gut grow and globalize. So for the first one, you have to expense manage. If you look at gets simple on that, the are two big expense drivers in leagues like ours. Most obvious talent are the

Melyssa Barrett: Players

Douglas Freeman: And the other is travel. The US is a big old country and it’s expensive to take 30, 40 people five or six times. And there are literally Melyssa teams that travel from Billings, Montana to Jacksonville, Florida with 30, 40 folks, they’ll spend 150, 200,000 a pop. They’re literally burning money. You do that five or six times, it’s one to $2 million, it’s gone.

Melyssa Barrett: Yeah.

Douglas Freeman: So the first thing we said is we’re going to be a no travel league when we build our teams. And what that basically means is how is that possible? Yeah, how is that possible? Exactly. We build the teams in geographic clusters, which is defined as four teams in a two to five hour distance.

Melyssa Barrett: Okay.

Douglas Freeman: Our teams, so we brought on board in March, our commissioner, NEF Hall of Famer, Andre Reed who played for the Buffalo Bills is actually based in San Diego. And then we started to build our teams out and we found with research, there’s just like food deserts, there’s sports deserts, there’s sports entertainment deserts.

When you look at the metropolitans 4 25, 1 metropolitan areas, 150,000 or more, when you take out the big cities, the San Franciscos and the Oakland, the San Joses and the LA’s and the New Yorks and Atlanta, you still have 360 areas ripe for opportunity. So that’s what we did. We looked said, let’s do home court. I’m in the northeast. Most of our colleagues are Bills mafia is big here. So we looked at 20 sports entertainment deserts in the northeast and whittled them down to four. So it was data analytics driven. I love it. And we ultimately landed two in Jersey, one in Connecticut, one in Long Island. The greatest distance is 114 miles. And so on game day I can rent two jumper vans for a grand total of $500. So that’s a 99.9% discount.

Melyssa Barrett: Wow.

Douglas Freeman: So then you have to look at your other big expense with this talent. You think, oh, here’s a quick stat. All these NCI division one teams, 17,000 seniors this year, football seniors were eligible to go to the NFL combine and there were only 329 combine spots.

Melyssa Barrett: Wow,

Douglas Freeman: That’s amazing. Way too many. It’s a glut of talent now for, it’s a buyer’s market ultimately forever. And then when you look at the NFL trade camps that are going on, there are 90 players with NFL signed contracts, they’re all going after millions of dollars over 32 teams, and you get 53 that make it plus practice squad every year, Melyssa, there’s almost 1200 of these NFL signed players sitting on a couch with no plan B, no

Melyssa Barrett: Jobs.

Douglas Freeman: Wow. We only have, for our cluster, we only have 20 jobs team, so about 80 jobs. So what happens is the price points fall dramatically. You’re talking about 200 to $400 a game across all leagues. So once again, compared to those millions of dollars, getting a 99% discount. So what does that mean for your team budget instead of one to 3 million budgets that the competitors are, we’re in the three to $400,000 range per

Melyssa Barrett: Team. Yeah. Wow.

Douglas Freeman: Now you can go over to, lemme stop there because I know that’s a lot of information. Before we go to the revenue side of that,

Melyssa Barrett: I know, I mean it’s really amazing how you’ve kind of turned the business model as you go to create this league that utilizes talent, that is premier talent. And I think what’s exciting is the folks that actually come out of high school or college and they’re ready to play now, actually there’s additional places for them to go and do what they love, which is not always the case. People, it’s like all of a sudden I got to find a job that’s like, well, I got to find something to feed my kids. But keeping the passion for what you love and being able to do it is so amazing. I mean, this is what makes life worthwhile. Right? Absolutely. I love the fact that, and I love the fact that you have all of this built in. It’s like, let’s do the research in the analytics. I never really thought about a sports desert. Is that crazy? Yes. But I love the way that you guys have thought about it because you’re absolutely right. I mean, there’s so many opportunities for this country to do so many things we haven’t done and bring them to people that haven’t necessarily seen it, which in my mind, you as a diversity expert, diversity, equity and inclusion, you’re bringing equity everywhere you go, which

Douglas Freeman: You’re absolutely right.

Melyssa Barrett: Absolutely. So I was going to ask you how your worlds intersect, but

Douglas Freeman: I’m You’ve nailed it. It is interwoven.

Melyssa Barrett: Yes.

Douglas Freeman: So you’re absolutely right. We are creating access, opportunity, equity, so many different levels. So it starts with the player and we’re giving jobs where jobs don’t exist.

Melyssa Barrett: And

Douglas Freeman: The goal is to have 30 teams by 2030, which is eight clusters. So lots more jobs domestically and ultimately to have global clusters and have jobs all around the world. For the other piece from an equity and access and development perspective is we’re not just going to have players show up. These are primarily black men and we are here to develop the whole player. So we actually have a named, when I say named a sponsored partner group in Long Island, 1.3 billion asset manager called Leventhal Financial Services, and it’s called the Leventhal Financial Literacy and Careers Academy.

Melyssa Barrett: Wow.

Douglas Freeman: So for the players in season, we’ll have obviously financial literacy, ethics and leadership development, health and wellbeing, life coaching for those who get to the level tier one, beyond chip, there will be mentorship and capabilities there, entrepreneurship, sports to careers. We can get people jobs in season out of season insurance modeling and more. And these elements will not just be face-to-face, but they’ll continue. And workshops will go on all year round and it won’t be restricted just to players. Those players that are in other leagues can come and they sign up and register. So we’re here to develop a whole player. We’re also using this as an attraction and a retention tool to differentiate ourselves as a league. We only have seen, for example, Canadian Football League, the CFL. There are players associated as an academy. We haven’t seen something like this at any league level, anywhere in the world. So this is a big differentiator, is a big giving back to the players and it’s a big development piece and it’s a big contribution to make these players great contributors to society moving forward. So that would be another example of, and then to staff, we have so many women and people of color participating. Chief teams Officer Rita Lee, chief Entertainment Officer, Rita Lee, African-American female, gmo, A VP of projects was also with us at UWG Asian female, our coach Tracy Curtis at our Danbury Diesel Connecticut team. First female coach of a pro men’s football team.

Melyssa Barrett: Wow, that’s amazing. I love the history.

Douglas Freeman: And then when

Melyssa Barrett: You look that history as good,

Douglas Freeman: You do, you just do it. And you have an NFL, hall of Famer, black male, Andrew Reed. Rarely you don’t see by and large we have and from an access and equity in these sports entertainment cities, we’re building out these cities and we’ll be branding them in ways because we have a RSN Regional Sports Network deal with MSC networks. So that’s home of the Knicks and Islanders and Rangers and Devils and Savers goes into 10 million homes in the tri-state area. All of our cities and businesses get branded through that. We have something called the Creator Sports Network. So you got the 40 plus demographics through that platform. Creator Sports Network is based in la, it’s former head of Twitch Sports, the Gaming Network, and Barrett Princess 215 live stream content creators, basically primarily gamers. So when we have a game going on, we will bring a brand, pay us money to get to that demographic. Barrick will get the specific communities and we’ll guarantee 250,000 viewers. And now we’ve covered 15 to 40

Melyssa Barrett: On

Douglas Freeman: The demographic side as well. So once again, more equity, more exposure to a broader audience, not just the usual suspect viewers on the cable or RSN network side. And that gets the towns. And so we’re doing an economic development play. You could almost call it a baby. Dion Sanders Danbury will be branded across the tri-state area and around the world through our creator sports network. Right.

Melyssa Barrett: I love it. Let’s pause for a moment. We’ll be right back. You’re not only doing it at the player level, right? You’re actually democratizing, I guess I’ll call it the ownership as well.

Douglas Freeman: Well see, that’s what’s interesting too because we are not going with the usual suspects. Look over time, Melyssa, I’ll tell you, I was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for the first time in January. I spoke at the Middle East Sports Investment Forum hosted by the Ministry of Investment, and that’s where the action is. But those are 25, 50, a hundred million dollars checks. However, you have to build relationship now. You have to get on the ground now. You have to be serious now. So that’s one. We went there, spoke on the sports entertainment panel, built a great set of relationships, and one of our partnerships is with the oldest and largest sports entertainment law firm, the guru group. And we’re going to have first ever pro football game of any sort in Saudi Arabia after Ramadan in March of next year, two Saudi teams, two US teams, Saudi US Hall of Fame Cup double header on Friday, double header on Sunday. So we’re starting to embed, and yes, we know that’s when the usual suspects would show up, but what we’re trying to do now is diversify.

Melyssa Barrett: Yeah,

Douglas Freeman: Diversify. Get access and opportunity to the new base of investors so that when these larger players, folks that we’re going to have to rely on the institutions, well, our investors will have accrued tremendous value. So there’s a virtuous ecosystem there. Our folks get in early at whatever appropriate level. Well, yes. When these folks come in, the valuation’s five, 10 times more. So we’ve not only brought our folks in, we’ve created wealth and enabled fairness in the system where it’s not just the big players that can accrue wealth, it’s everyone who wants to as well. So your question really is practically every strand of our model as D and I infused in it.

Melyssa Barrett: Yes, I love it. Well, every single one, and this is the way life is supposed to. Right. I love the fact that you’re literally at every level, you have changed the game, which is awesome. And I know, I don’t think we’ve actually mentioned the league name yet, so I want to make sure we get that out there.

Douglas Freeman: So it’s the entertainment football association, fusion entertainment, sports technology, culture, fashion, globalization, and the idea. And it has a sport tech lab that has already, we’ve partnered with a phenomenal group, also connected through our chief teams officer, Tommy Benicio it, this group called Fan Club Fan, CLB. And actually, I’m still excited about this. I’m going to try to use my deck skills and see if I can show you on this. Just the draft, because it was used with Tim Brown and the league in the Midwest and Tommy’s league, they built huge success fans coming on board. They got for a league that doesn’t have an RSN like ours, they got a game with 260,000 viewers just with influence. Oh yeah.

Melyssa Barrett: Wow.

Douglas Freeman: So they’re so excited with us because they’re like, well, that league, all the owners kind of wanted to do stuff. You guys want to do every idea. It’s like we want to do every idea. We want to do everything. So this is literally early. You’re getting a sneak peek of the earliest phase of our app. This is what our sport tech lab is all about. We actually have a partner in New Jersey. He looks wireless, that’s already named our lab. We just have to do some paperwork, but they’re like, they want to do AI stuff with placement of the ball. It will kick in tail end this year to 2026. They just don’t have the bandwidth. But they’ve gotten dibs on our lab. Our lab has three tiers, the actual games and the generation of content.

Melyssa Barrett: Then

Douglas Freeman: The creator sports L market is tier two, and then this is tier three. This is ultimately the app. This is where the fans, where fans can go every day, get rewards and points, activation with sponsors, talk to players, players, players can sell training. If you want to do a training with a player, you can also, you want to sell mentorship, all sorts of cool things, fantasy, some form of game merch, simulated games, other streaming we’re unveiling something called the golden tryout. And this Melyssa is where American Idol meets football.

Melyssa Barrett: Oh, wow.

Douglas Freeman: So we’re going to be giving up to 10 contracts.

Melyssa Barrett: No,

Douglas Freeman: Yes. Our season will start in end of October in a tournament fashion.

Melyssa Barrett: So

Douglas Freeman: We call it trick or treat Turning week. We’ll do that tournament, then we’ll do Middle East, and then we’ll have a season with two clusters here in the northeast, and we’ll likely be the Midwest Mid-Atlantic PBD. So for trick or treat, turning week first two days of the golden tryout, and one of those contracts will be selected by the fans. Oh,

Melyssa Barrett: Interesting. Okay.

Douglas Freeman: Yes. So now you can see people will watch within 40, there’s games. That’s a Saturday, Sunday, it’s like the 25th of October, the 1st of November, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday games. So literally within 48 hours of getting a contract, you’re live in a game.

Melyssa Barrett: Wow. That’s amazing. I love this. I love the tech aspects of it. I love all the fan base, the creative elements. I mean, there’s so much when you think about what you are doing and how it’s impacting community, it’s amazing. I love this.

Douglas Freeman: Yes. Because people talk about how sports is a unifying force, but you’re absolutely right, Melyssa, there’s so many, even in this turning week, we’ll start with the goal. So this is going to transform some people’s lives and inspire, we think.

Melyssa Barrett: Yes.

Douglas Freeman: Then we’ll have the Financial Literacy Academy on day three, day four, first game, day five, health and wellness with flag football and youth. Day six, a sports entertainment investor. Discussion. Day seven is the final championship game, and that’s just the one kickoff tournament. So you can really do some amazing things for communities, for fans, for the youth. It’s such a multifaceted, multi-pronged creature with so many uplifting elements. And that’s one of the reasons we were in the Middle East, because the Middle East, every country has a business plan. They call ’em vision plans. And every Middle East country has sports as one of their pillars. Because sports is sports tourism, it’s nation building and nation branding. It makes the population healthier. It can identify elite athletes. You have a broader base of healthy people in the population. It brings sports tourism, and it brands those countries around the world in positive manners.

Melyssa Barrett: Yeah, I have the pleasure of interviewing Lawrence Etta. You have to check out his podcast, and he’s doing a bunch of work over there, and it’s just amazing to hear about the transformation that’s going on, not only with technology, but with the culture itself in terms of women and all the things that are happening. It’s really an amazing transformation. So I might give a shout out to Lawrence. Etta, I may have to connect the two of you at some point.

Douglas Freeman: That’ll be lovely. That’ll be lovely. That’s amazing.

Melyssa Barrett: Yeah. So tell me more about this golden tryout, because how does it work? Do people sign up or how

Douglas Freeman: Does Yes, they do. So they sign up online, have regular tryouts. We have players already assigned for our teams coaches, a whole nine yards coaching staff, but these will be additional folk. So there’ll be a lot of this gets announced to social media. We will be doing some fun stuff with influencers to get the word out. And then there’ll be the tryout dates in the New York area, likely one or more in New Jersey or New Jersey and Long Island. People sign up, it’s $250 to sign up. And this is, I think one of the only tryouts where there will be contracts provided and there’ll be scouts from other leagues, so it just won’t be our league. There’s a European pro football league, we’ll have scouts, the CFL, other indoor leagues, and the UFL, the rocks, UFL will also have scouts there. So it’s a real tremendous, once again, access opportunity

Melyssa Barrett: In

Douglas Freeman: Ways that aren’t provided before. Golden tryout expands on that theme.

Melyssa Barrett: And look at the, I mean, even the price of entry, I mean, it’s like wow. I mean, it’s there for you.

Douglas Freeman: It’s there

Melyssa Barrett: Love.

Douglas Freeman: It’s there for the take.

Melyssa Barrett: Seize your rank. So then these folks become the fantasy football players, like the regular

Douglas Freeman: People. Yes, they do.

Melyssa Barrett: Yes, they do. I love it. Is that amazing? The regular people become the ju to jewel?

Douglas Freeman: Yes. They become the jug to regular people through the golden trial.

Melyssa Barrett: Yes. I love

Douglas Freeman: It. The ultimate manifestation. Yeah.

Melyssa Barrett: Yeah.

Douglas Freeman: Of love.

Melyssa Barrett: So you guys are starting with kind a regional focus, and then you talked about the expansion.

Douglas Freeman: Yeah, so we’re under a brand, I shouldn’t say under. We have contracts. One of the contracts, NASA Coliseum is run by a group called Legends, a SM Global, which has about 450 arenas of stadium around the world. And because they have so many and we’re linked in the family, we actually have clusters laid up specifically with their stadium that are ready to go right now.

Melyssa Barrett: Oh wow. Okay.

Douglas Freeman: So there is a California potential cluster. There are Stadia available right now in Fresno, Bakersfield, long Beach, Glendale, I can’t think of if there’s some in their network, but we have looked at stadium in Northern California as well.

Melyssa Barrett: And this particular league is men, women, what?

Douglas Freeman: So this is all men. Okay. It’s all men. Yeah. So it’s all men.

Melyssa Barrett: Okay.

Douglas Freeman: Currently all men. Now there is a plan

Melyssa Barrett: To bring you, were going to say perfectly, because I knew

Douglas Freeman: That was

Melyssa Barrett: Coming.

Douglas Freeman: Yeah. There will eventually be women for sure. Question is to timing really more than

Melyssa Barrett: Anything else. I was going to say, so your vision of this, I love how the E-N-T-F-L-A and how you can rep hard and rank high as you say. Yes. So what is the vision here? I mean, it just seems like this is maybe just scratching the surface.

Douglas Freeman: We’re scratching the surface.

Melyssa Barrett: You all are thinking

Douglas Freeman: We want to be global. We want to be the first league that has hundreds of global teams in clusters. So Middle East cluster, a UK cluster, a Canadian cluster, a Malaysia cluster, South Korea, Colombian country can have four teams almost anywhere in the world.

Melyssa Barrett: I love it. Oh, that’s really exciting.

Douglas Freeman: Yeah.

Melyssa Barrett: Oh wow. So this kicked off, you said last year?

Douglas Freeman: Yeah, so we formally kicked on March, and the first playing will happen October and Halloween week.

Melyssa Barrett: So where’s the first game?

Douglas Freeman: So the first game will be in New Jersey. So it’s a semi-final game. So it’s a tournament style. So a tournament, it’s a Final four, just happens. We have four teams, so

Melyssa Barrett: Okay.

Douglas Freeman: Two semi-finals and a championship game.

Melyssa Barrett: Nice.

Douglas Freeman: We’ve been very fortunate. We have raised capital. We had a goal of a million dollars and we started in December, and then we had a huge boost May, June. We got an N-F-L-N-B-A Hall of Famer investing in that. We got MC networks around that time, and we’ve just had a lot of momentum since then. The sports world as a whole has taking greater momentum. We may have seen that the LA Lakers have been sold for 10 billion. That lifts all boats. There’s just tons of private equity invest. So then the other Middle East and global investors. So over the next, at least five years, and we know it’s going to be at least five, maybe 15, because we know the Middle East dollars are built on country business plans. So those dollars will be flowing, well, probably 15 because FIFA is happening in 2034 in Saudi Arabia.

So those dollars just continue to flow around those major events. So at least from a Middle East perspective, you’re talking 10 to 15 years of heavy duty sports investment. We think private equity will probably follow the same path. So you’re talking a decade or more of basically like the old internet days, it’s very frothy. People flood in. There are very few assets. So when you get in, now it’s for something that’s solid and has a good sustainability model, and you want to see profit as early as possible because that shows track record, then you are a very valuable asset out the gate.

Melyssa Barrett: And

Douglas Freeman: So that’s why we brought in investors to participate in this. So people from all sorts of backgrounds can do. So.

Melyssa Barrett: Yeah. That’s awesome. I mean, that’s amazing. So in terms of the talent that you’re looking to attract, what kind of message do you want to give to people that you’re looking for?

Douglas Freeman: By and large, the talent is folks. We pretty well stick to people who are around 22. So most people have gone through some even community college ball, semipro 22 and up. Your typical range is 22 to 35. There’s some people are just in such extraordinary shape that they can go beyond that, but that’s a typical range.

Melyssa Barrett: Okay, fantastic. Well, and I’m going to ask you this question because when you think about your third appearance on the Jali Podcast, what are we going to be talking about when it comes to celebrating around the E-N-T-F-L-A?

Douglas Freeman: Yeah, I think we celebrate every one at a time. Every day is a win.

And we have worked hard a lot of people to get to this point. And I think we just continue along the track. Our goal is 30 teams, eight clusters by 2030. If we can get as close to that as possible over the next five years, the NFL took 73 years to get to 32 teams. And so we were trying to do it in less than one 10th of time if we think we can. And another win is just getting a global tournament in the Middle East, being the historic first. I think that’s a big win as well.

Melyssa Barrett: I love it. What have you learned about yourself stepping into this new literal arena?

Douglas Freeman: I think I’ve learned how to push myself at an age where I think many of us, we’ve been very fortunate. We’ve had a lot of time with our career tracks and paths, and I think I had some good strength in HR and deis as consultant, and I think I could do that for the rest of my life, really. But this is different. And it’s a challenge, Melyssa, with very smart people, a lot of billionaires, a lot of NFL owners, a lot of NHL owners have tried this and it just has not worked out.

Melyssa Barrett: And

Douglas Freeman: I see exactly why it is an extremely difficult task. It’s 40 years and this has pushed me intellectually. It’s pushed me spiritually, it’s pushed me from a resource perspective. It’s pushed me every single way and shown real will. I think I’ve seen, I’m very proud of the will to ensure that outcomes transpire even when they’re not likely to. And for somehow some way it’s pure will in some cases, that enables certain outcomes to happen when maybe they even shouldn’t have, are very happy and proud and proud of the people who have been so passionate. They too have expressed such straight resilience and will sticktoitiveness and perseverance, not the talked about version, the one that you have to just live through. And there’s some things that could be tough and psychologically they can be tough physically, they can be tough economically, and people have done it. So I think that’s the biggest takeaway for me.

Melyssa Barrett: That’s awesome. What a great way to close out the episode. Thank you. So thank you so much. This has been really, really interesting to learn about and I honestly cannot wait to hear more and look forward to delivering more messaging out here. What you’re doing. I, I mean, I live in an area that’s not, I’m sure probably has some sort of sports desert. We have some sports, but we got a lot of deserts out here. Yes. So it’ll be interesting to see how your expansion just continues to grow. I have a feeling you guys are going to have to accelerate because there’s going to be people wanting you everywhere.

Douglas Freeman: That’s what we hope, that’s what for. That’s the happy hope.

Melyssa Barrett: Thank

Douglas Freeman: You. Thank you. And same to you, Melyssa.

Melyssa Barrett: Yes. Wish you the best.

Douglas Freeman: Thank you so much.

Melyssa Barrett: Thanks for joining me on the Jali Podcast. Please subscribe so you won’t miss an episode. See you next week.