 Hello, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Monaco Crypto Summit presented by Digital Bits. It's a conference where a lot of the people using Digital Bits and the industry are coming together around the future of crypto and the application. It's got a great guest, Raj. Raj Kotiya, founder and CEO of an innovative company. Love this, I love this company, Loot, Mogul. Raj, thanks for coming on theCUBE, appreciate it. Oh, thank you for having us. So I checked out what you guys are doing. You got the sports metaverse angle going on. It's super valuable because sports is super entertaining. People are engaged, it's huge fan base, huge online, now digital convergence going on with the physical, you know, you see all kinds of sports betting going on, now everything's going digital. There's a whole nother consumer experience going on with sports. I mean, the game is still the same on the field or the court. That's kind of good. Now it's going to digital. Take a minute to explain what you guys are working on. Yeah. So yes, we are building out a sports metaverse where we are bringing athletes, whether they're NBA stars, NFL stars, WNBA, many of those athletes into metaverse, giving them the ownership of the entire metaverse commerce along with gameplay. So that's something from our perspective. This is something that we're focused on. We're building out stadiums. Athletes can own stadiums. Athlete can create their own training centers, media hubs, and imagine Lisa Leslie, for example, is building out a women leadership sports academy, right? We have Michael Cooper building out defensive academy. So those are all the brands we have, 174 NBA, WNBA stars, and we are building on this. The brand is the platform. That's correct. That's the trend we're seeing. And it's also an extension of their reach and community so they can convert their star power and athlete with owner's approval. They probably write it onto the contracts. He says, I can imagine all the complications, but they bring that online and extend that energy and brand equity to fans and social networks. And many of these athletes are tremendous successful in their web two careers, right? Some are current athletes, some are former athletes, but they have built such a brand persona where people are following them on Instagram. For example, Carlos Boozer, he has like almost six million followers between Twitter and Instagram. And those kind of brands are looking at, how do I give back to the community? How do I engage with my community? And web three, and especially with our platform, we are giving that power back to the players. So you guys got some big names, Boozer's on there, you mentioned, Carlos Boozer, you mentioned at least the Leslie others, among others, Michael Cooper, throwback to the old Lakers. Magic Johnson's kind of actually here in crypto. We just saw him in the lobbies. They had been dinner the other night at Nobu. You got a lot of NBA support. Take, can you explain how you're working this angle? You got some great traction, momentum. You get great pedigree, riot games in your career. You kind of get the world, the tech world, the media world as it comes together. What's the secret sauce here? Is it the NBA relationship? Combination of the team, explain. It's really focusing on what, we are building on a metaverse, focusing on players first, right? So players are literally, we call our platform as owned by the players, made for the players, and engagement is really all done through the players, right? So that's our key sauce. And when we worked out with NBA, we are part of the NBPA acceleration program for 2022. That is funded by A16Z and many others. And our partnership with league is very critical. So it's not only partnering with player association, partner with leagues, whether it's NBA, WNBA, NFL. So those are the venues and this becomes almost a program, especially for athletes to really generate this lifetime engagement and royalty model because some of these famous athletes really want to give back to the communities. So like, for example, I use Lisa Leslie a lot, but Lisa Leslie really wants to empower women leadership and really help women in sports, for example, right? So those are the angles that really people are excited about. Well, for the people watching that might not understand some of the ins and outs of sports and Raj, your background, your team. It's interesting, the sports teams have been on the big data train for many, many years. You look at all the stadiums now, they got mobile devices, got Wi-Fi under the chairs. They use data and technology to manage the team, manage the stadium and venue and operations, suppliers, whatnot, and then also the fans. So they got about a decade or so experience already in the digital world. This is not new to the sports world. So you guys come to the table, kind of at a good time. Yeah, yeah, especially the defy of the sports, right? So there's defy of the finance, but this is the really a decentralization of the sports is something that there's a lot of traction. And there are many companies that are really focusing on that. Our focus, obviously, is players first, right? How do we give power to the players? And those are really driving the entire engagement and also the brands. How's the NBA feel about this? Because, you know, you get the NBA and you get the team, you get the owners. I mean, the democratization of the players, which I love, by the way, that angle, kind of brings their power. Now it's a new kind of balance of power. How is the NBA handling this? What's the many conversations you've had with the organization? So obviously there are a lot of things that people have to be careful about, right? They have existing contracts, existing digital media rights. So that's something that we have to be very tactful when we are working with NBA and NBPA on what we can say, we cannot say. So that is obviously, there's a lot of existing multi-million or billion dollar contracts that they cannot void with the web because of the evolution of web three. You know, I love riffing on the notion of contract compliance when there's major structural change happening. I remember back in baseball, back in the days for the internet, the franchise rights was geographic territory. Well, if you're the New York Yankees, you're doing great. If you're Milwaukee, you're not doing too good. But then comes the internet. That's correct. That's no geography, there's no boundaries. That's correct. So you're going to have stadiums, you're going to have virtual, so again, how do they keep up with the contracts? Yeah. I mean, this is going to be a fundamental issue. That's correct. And I think if they don't move, the players are going to fill that void. That's correct, yeah. And especially with this, it's an NIL deal, right? That happened for the players, especially college athletes. So we are in the process of onboarding 1.5 million college athletes. And those athletes are looking for, not paying for the tuition for the colleges, but also for engagement and generating this early on. Okay, Raj, we're going to make a prediction here on theCUBE. 2020, we're in Monaco. All the NBA, NHL, the teams, they're going to be run by player dows. What do you think? A very good prediction, yeah. Very good prediction, yeah. I mean, that's a joke. I'm joking aside. I mean, it's kind of connecting the dots, but whether that happens or not, what this means is if this continues to go down this road. That's correct, yeah. The players collectively could come together and flip the script. Yeah. And that's the entire decentralization, right? So it's like, the Web3 has really disrupted this industry, as you know. And I know your community knows that, too. Of course, we do, we love it. But it's something from sports perspective. We are very excited. Well, I love it. Talking, let's get into the weeds here and the product under the hood. To me, the roadmap, obviously, NFTs are involved. That's kind of sexy right now. I get the digital asset model on there, but there's a lot more under the covers. You got to have a platform, you got to have the big data. And then ultimately align into connecting other systems together. How do you view the tech roadmap and the product roadmap? What's your vision? Yeah. So the one thing that you have to be tactful as a company, whether it's Loot, Mogul, or any other startup, is you have to be really part of the ecosystem. So the reason why we are here at Monaco is that we obviously are looking at partnership with digital bits. And those kind of partnership, whether it's sports centric, metaverse centric are very critical for the ecosystem and the community to grow. And that's one thing you cannot build another isolated metaverse, right? So that's one thing many companies have done it, but obviously not. That's a walled garden that doesn't work. Exactly. So you have to be more open platform. So one thing that we did early on in our platform, we have open APIs and SDKs where not only you as an athlete can bring in your other e-commerce or Web3 NFTs or anything you want, but you can also bring in other real estate properties. So when we are building out this metaverse, you start with real estate that you build out obviously stadiums and arenas and academies, training academies, but then athletes can bring their web commerce, right? Whether it is NFT, wearables, shoe line. So you're looking at an ecosystem on top of Loot. So you're like, I'm almost like, you think about a platform as a service and a cloud computing paradigm. Look different, not decentralized, but similarly enabling others do the heavy lifting on their behalf. Is that right? So that's correct, yeah. So we are calling ourselves as the sports platform as a service, right? So we want to add the word sports because in many contexts, right? When you're building metaverse, you can get distracted with it, especially we are in Los Angeles, right? Can I get a luxury box for the cube and some of the metaverse islands and the stadiums you're doing? We are working on it. We are definitely working on it, especially the Los Angeles stadium, yeah. Well, we're looking for some hose. Anyone out there looking for some hose for the metaverse? Bring your avatar, you can hose the cube. Raj, thanks for coming on the cube. Really appreciate it. What's next for you guys? Obviously continue to build momentum. You got your plate full. How many people on the team? What's going on? Give a plug for the company. What are you looking for? Share with the audience some of your goals. Yeah, so the main thing we are looking for is really from a brand perspective. If you are looking at buying properties, this would be an amazing time to buy virtual sports stadium. So we are obviously, we have 175 stadiums in roadmap right now. We started with Los Angeles, then we're in San Francisco, New York, Qatar, Dubai. So all those sports stadiums, whether they're basketball, football, soccer, are all the properties. And from a community perspective, if you want to get an early access, we are all about giving back to the community. So you can buy it at a much better pre-sell price right now. So that's one. The second thing is that if you have any innovative ideas or a player that you want to integrate into, we have a very open platform from a community engagement perspective. If you have something unique from a land sale perspective or the NFT perspective, plug contact us at Raj at lootmogal.com. And I'm assuming a virtual team, you an LA area, where's your home? So yes, I live in Malibu and our office is in Santa Monica. We have an office in India. We have a few developers also in Europe. And then we have a team of 34 people right now. You're going to hire some folks? We are looking for a high-expective. What are you looking for? So we are looking for a passionate sports fanatics. It's not hard to find. Yeah, who knows how to also code, right? So from a blockchain perspective, we are chain agnostic. But obviously right now we're building on polygon, but we are chain agnostic. So if you have any blockchain development experience, that's something we are looking for. Raj, thanks for coming on lootmogal. Check them out. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE here in Monaco for the Monaco Crypto Summit presented by Digital Bits. We've got all the action. A lot of great guests going on. Stay with us for more coverage. John Furrier, thanks for watching. Here's a quick clip. I'll start with a couple of quick clips. Thank you. And I'll turn the mic on, so you can hear me. Now, I'll turn it off. I'll turn it on. OK. OK. OK. OK. OK. OK. OK. OK. 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