The ROAR Podcast: George Barrios Return

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