♪ emily: i am emily chang and this is the best of "bloomberg technology." we're bringing you all the top interviews from the week in tech. coming up, a look inside dick costolo's life after twitter. he joins us for a wide ranging conversation. an army of tens of thousands of tech companies, reddit us on the fight for net neutrality.

competitive video gamers get their league. the first seven franchises and robert kraft went all in. we will bring you that conversation. a new hire at twitter. former intuit head of finance will become the chief financial officer effective in late august. he will report directly to ceo jack dorsey. he will assume the role. he will continue to serve as the coo. for more reaction on the shakeup, we spoke to dick costolo who returned to the ceotup world, currently the and cofounder of a personal fitness platform. dick: i have a lot of confidence in the team over there. anthony and jack, and the cmo.

emily: they reported their first quarterly loss during the we've seen a new strategy unfolding. do you expect any change in strategy with a new cfo? ck: i could not say not being there right now but those guys are pretty focused and have unclear on what they are working on. i expect that to continue if they are promoting the way they are. emily: what do you think of the new coo? dick: i think it's probably anthony taking on more of a day-to-day operating role moving fully into the coo role and they need someone to fill in. emily: let's talk about the trump administration. there has been a lot of noise. i am curious as somebody somebody who has started many companies over a decade and a half -- companies. emily: what is it like starting a company under the trump

administration? dick: this feels like one of those questions we should have when we are walking along the pier. to be perfectly honest, it's not that different when you're in the day-to-day trenches of running a startup. you're focused on hiring the pipeline and trying to find the right people on the team, trying the bugs out of the beta and that performance of the beta and trying to understand the dynamics of the beta and the consumer stuff we're building. to be perfectly frank, on a day-to-day basis it does not affect what we are doing. emily: tech leaders came out vocally against trump. we have not seen the results of the policies he has promised. we do know it appears he plans to block the so-called startup visas given to entrepreneurs who come from foreign countries. how big of a deal is this? dick: i think that's really unfortunate. i think to be just blunt about

it, it's a sign he is not paying much if any attention to what tech leaders are talking to him about. i can assure you they would be promoting that idea. it promotes job creation in the u.s. you want the best entrepreneurs in the world starting their companies and building these future big businesses here, and hiring people here and not doing it elsewhere. to the extent you can attract them here and enable them to build those companies here and thrive here with a great asset to capital and nourishing of entrepreneurship we have. the more of that, the better. i think it's unfortunate and that not having , been in any of those discussions, that it is a little bit paying lip service to listing to tech leaders and not really doing it. emily: we saw them take a hit the last couple of weeks. they also took a hit today and

the wake of another presidential email scandal. what would you be bracing for? dick: i have thought for a while that the markets have been underpricing risk with everything going on in the world, not just this. things going on in europe and elsewhere in the middle east. i guess i would continue to be bracing for what i would have expected by now to be more volatility. volatility has been at record lows recently. just sort of looking at what is going on would be surprising , that continues to be the case for an extended amount of time. emily: what about the private markets? what do you see happening? dick: it has been the case recently that these very late stage private market valuations, companies are staying private

for 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years now. it ends up being significantly higher than when they debut in the public markets. that's probably going to continue to be the case in the near term. meaning that you will see 2018 ors go public in 2019 whose price of valuations were much higher than their public valuations. i don't see that changing anytime soon. i see continued lots of money in , the private markets chasing few deals, which drives up the prices. when these things finally see the light of day in the retail market, it's sort of probably rightly turns out to be the case not worth as much as their last private rounds were. emily: dick costolo, the former ceo of twitter. we're going to hear more from him later in the show. uber is handing over the keys to its business in russia. the company and the google of

russia are merging their ride hailing businesses. they will invest and take more than a third of a stake that will be valued at more than $3.7 million. coming up, reddit is among the 70,000 organizations protesting the rollback of net neutrality. we will hear from co-founder alexis ohanian. plus, prime day has termed from -- turned from a marketing scheme to a record raking event -- record-breaking event at amazon. we will take you behind the scenes. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ tech giants are stepping up the fight over net

neutrality. a host of internet giants are joining forces to protest the rollback of net neutrality rules. earlier this year the sec voted to start unwinding net neutrality rules put in place by the obama administration. on one side, internet service providers who largely favor less regulation. facebook, google, netflix and other tech giants could the hurt if the government starts interfering with the internet. he is been pushing it since his first day in office area we are joined to discuss why the issue is so important. reddit co-founder alexis ohanian joined us. alexis: reddit has been fighting for the open internet. this is something that steve and i believe in deeply. that is what gave us the chance to start reddit in a little apartment with $12,000 in the bank. 12 years later, to build something that is the fourth most trafficked site a minute . net neutrality made that possible. emily: the site costar can you

have a message there. other companies are telling users to take action. google for example, saying today's open internet and chores that both new and established services, whether offered up by a broadband provider, google, or a startup, have the ability to reach users on an equal playing field. alexis: it's been great to see more and more companies come and join our ranks. a lot of people remember the internet blackout that happened because sites like reddit and wikipedia where protesting. they were protesting and the push to get title ii. those happened because platforms and consumers basically had their voices heard, made phone calls. it seems very and acronyms chronistic but call up your senator and your representative, that still one

of the best way future voice -- the best way to have your voice heard. we now have an audience of hundreds of millions of people across these platforms who are informed and taking action. the fcc is not beholden to voters because they are appointed by the president, our legislature is. if we can show this is an issue that is as bipartisan as we know it is, we can get those things crystallize around us. officer wasc appointed by president trump. this is what he had to say about why he thinks it's important. yesterday,told us title ii hangs over our businesses like a black cloud. that's the kind of regulatory overreach we want to remove. every american deserves better, faster, and cheaper internet. i'm committed to delivering it to them. emily: he also makes the argument that less regulation means more innovation, the facebooks and googles and netflixes is can it grow and

develop. alexis: i only know about it from the standpoint of an entrepreneur. i think the chairman as a lawyer. i know that level playing field chores --ativity and ensures -- net neutrality insurers guarantees innovation can thrive. at the end of the day, we want the free market to pick winners and losers, not big cable. emily: what if the rollback happens? what would the consequences be? alexis: it would only be the start of a conversation that i know america would need to have with their elected officials. what we could expect is the kind of things that unfortunately will not surprise many people who have dealt with isps before. that means increased rates. you can imagine internet that start to look a lot like your cable television. you get a default internet package that may have some news sites you like and social networking site you like but the ones that you really love cost more. a tiered internet is fundamentally broken. it is pretty offensive an idea

to most americans who want to get access to the websites they want access to and to entrepreneurs to start a business and win because they made something people want and not lose because somebody brokered a deal. emily: the counter argument is that tech companies have become incredibly powerful. you look it google and facebook and netflix and they are throwing their weight around. alexis: netflix is a great example. this is a company that for years, they were on our side championing net neutrality. , then they get to be really big. a couple of months ago, people asked what side of this are you on? at first, the company said, we are over it, we have outgrown it we don't need it. , this is a publicly traded company who is beholden to their shareholders who because of the blowback from their customers , because the american people said just kidding we do support , net neutrality and we know this is important and we are expecting a similar thing to manifest with our senators and representatives who are going to hear the same thing from their constituents.

whether you are just a casual internet viewer looking at cute cat photos or a small business owner trying to start something, you want a level playing field. emily: dick costolo was on the show yesterday. he was talking about the meeting leadersall of the tech and president trump that they had in washington. he suggested the president isn't listening. he might be holding these meetings, but not listening to what tech leaders have to say. what is your message to the administration? alexis: right now, we are primarily focused on the congress. we think, especially regarding net neutrality, this is something the legislature can do something bipartisan and what americans want. reddit inc. has never taken a formal trip to d.c. before but we will now that we have a policy team forming. we want to make relationships with senators and representatives. we haven't had any meeting jet with anyone on the executive

side. our focus is we want to make immediate impact. emily: what is the latest on reddit? you returned to the company. alexis: i've got to give credit to steve huffman. we came back full time a little over two years ago. he has done an amazing job building this company to something really formidable. there are over 240 employees now. both the business and the product have grown significantly under his watch exciting times. , emily: that was the reddit co-founder alexis ohanian. microsoft is making high-speed internet or accessible through the united states. the tech giant announced a new campaign which will aim to eliminate the gap in high-speed internet access in the hardest to reach areas. the effort would eliminate the broadband gap over the next five years, starting by funding projects in 12 u.s. states in the upcoming year.

by 2022, microsoft plans to provide fast internet to millions of people. coming up, we are turning our focus to asia. china's great internet firewall could get even tougher to penetrate. plus, we are on the ground in china, we will show you which the youngest consumers in the country are gravitating toward. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: this week, the chinese government said it would not disrupt legitimate access to the global internet by businesses and general users. bloomberg reported that china customers --elecom characters to bar individuals from using vpn services to circumvent firewalls. they said in a statement that trade and enterprises requiring internet abroad can turn to authorized telecommunication entities.

the existing notice will not affect normal operations. this shuts down a major window to the global internet, which helps users bypass restrictions to china, where thousands of websites that are blocked. tech is editor for asia joining us. >> china has played this game of cat and mouse with virtual private networks for many years. for a while, people use a certain vpn and it works pretty effectively to give them access to facebook and twitter and sites that are typically blocked. the chinese government will crack down. we have a more comprehensive approach with a government is going to the major telecom companies and asking them to block all vpn services accessing the outside internet. that's a big step for them to try to tighten up on the censorship around their internet and try to block people from getting outside china and access to these websites they

want to be blocked. emily: i play that same cat and mouse game having lived in china, traveled to china. it works and then you use another vpn. in practice, how was be -- how will this be different than the status quo? peter: conventional wisdom has been that china is not going to be able to keep this up and eventually they will have to , open the internet and people will be able to get access and chinese people will get access to websites outside of the country. what we are seeing right now is a serious tightening of that. ex-pats do this all the time to get access to twitter or google or gmail or google maps. you sort of need it. it's not just ex-pats, it's other people too who want information that is blocked on these websites, including the new york times and bloomberg. we have a much more serious crackdown. the president xi jinping has

talked about how he wants to maintain control over china's internet. it's a radical move and it looks like he is determined to keep that kind of control and that opens up tons of opportunities for chinese companies because u.s. companies in the internet are not able to operate in the country. emily: one of the themes for multinational companies that operate in china? they have been operating in this legal gray area as well. they can use vpns, but only internally. would this affect them? peter: it is important to distinguish, this rule is based on people familiar with it. there has not been an official announcement. the restrictions are going to be individual use of vpn not the , corporate use. in terms of the individuals, you will see many individuals inside china who have been using services like twitter or facebook, etc., will not be able to access those sites. they will lose thousands of

users on many of these websites so that is a significant deal. it's not clear what kind of opportunities those companies will have beyond this. emily: what does this mean or what could this mean for the companies that have been blocked all this time, whether it's facebook or twitter? the conversation has been for the last several years, will they ever be unblocked? this seems to be a massive step in the opposite direction. peter: these companies have been very determined to get into china in some way. google was in china for a while and then decided to pull out because they did not want to comply with the censorship there. this will put more pressure on them to find new ways around this. i'm sure the people at facebook and twitter are looking for alternatives. the creativity of people inside of china to get around this great firewall has been pretty amazing over the years. step ina pretty serious tightening this up. there may be alternative ways to get around the firewall.

emily: what might it mean for a company like airbnb that has hired a china-based ceo to focus whereasding in china, all other companies like the ones we mentioned have tried and failed? peter: airbnb runs a different business. it's not an information or media business in any sense. they may not face the same kind of restrictions. the market has been open to western companies to come in. chinese technology companies of been very strong. airbnb is competing with a couple of local players that are really powerful. of companiesrepeat trying to compete with alibaba where alibaba ended up competing and really took the market. it will be a case-by-case basis. emily: that was bloomberg tech's peter ahlstrom. sticking with china, alibaba is taking a page from the amazon go cashless convenience store.

bloomberg asia correspondent stephen engle got a look at the festival that features other new retail strategies that integrate online with off-line shopping. stephen: the festivals were the -- where the virtual world meets the physical. some 108 vendors here are selling their wares. the targets are the millennials on their smart phones, buying all kinds of stuff. the festival is in its second year is double the size of last year. it is an off-line showcase for china's entrepreneurs who have online shopsful without crippling the brick-and-mortar overhead. whether it's the latest in design or virtual reality combat, the festival represents the new youth driven consumer economy in china. a quarter of the vendors are those born after 1990.

in this melee, the generation gap was all too evident. this 30-year-old knew exactly what he was doing when he started making a portable and professional folding electric guitars. >> this was the only way we could get so many enclosures. we've only existed two years. stephen: how many have you sold? >> about 1000. >> are all your customers in china where are you selling overseas too? >> we are selling to the u.s. as well. we have distributors there already. we just started. >> alibaba is starting their new concept and they are targeting young consumers who are more adept at using mobile wallets. this cafe has its flaws. for example, you can have too

many shoppers in the shop at the same time. in this beta trial, it can overwhelm the system but it pays off. it gets shoppers to use their alipay in the offline world. that is very valuable. emily: stephen engle reporting from china. a new hire for softbank. michael ronan, a top executive at goldman sachs is leaving the firm to join the $100 billion softbank business fund. he has worked on many large tech deals in recent years, including the push for majority control of sprint in 2015. he has been involved in putting together vision fund earlier in the year. coming up, amazon calls prime day record-breaking. we break down the history around the 30 hour shopping event next. all episodes of "bloomberg technology" are streaming on twitter.

check us out at bloomberg tech -- p.m. p.m. weekday weekdays in new york. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ emily: welcome back to the best of bloomberg technology. i am emily chang. amazon's third annual prime day ended up being its biggest global shopping event, surpassing sales on black friday and cyber monday. the event grew by more than 60% over the last year, generating about $1 billion in revenue. the 30-hour event saw more new members joining prime than any other day. we took a look at the history of prime day, and how amazon took a page directly from alibaba's handbook. amazon is rolling out its third annual prime day in a bigger way than ever before.

the manufactured holiday was extended to 30 hours, with more than 100,000 new deals for prime members around the globe. the e-commerce giant is offering new deals every five minutes on products like the amazon echo and flatscreen tv's. amazon services are also on offer. one flashy deal, four months of unlimited music, costing prime members just $.99. but amazon cannot take all the credit for coming up with this extravagant shopping event. the company run by jeff bezos took a page straight out of alibaba's handbook. for years, the chinese e-commerce giant have capitalized on 11/11, singles' day in china, turning the anti-valentine's day into one of the biggest shopping holidays of the year. on singles' day in 2016, alibaba racked up almost $18 billion in sales in the 24 hour event. but comparing singles' day to prime day is not completely fair.

alibaba has been running the show since 2009. amazon only started these promotions in 2015. another key difference, prime day is only available to the approximately 85 million prime customers, while alibaba's is open to all online shoppers around the world. while prime day is still in its early stages, it is already showing signs of being a big success. when amazon held its first prime day in july 2015, it marked a turning point for the stock price. over the past two years, amazon shares have gained almost 120% in value. amazon may have some catching up to do, but if it continues to follow in the footsteps of alibaba, amazon maybe writing a prime success story of its own. right before the official kickoff of amazon prime day, bloomberg's editor at large cory johnson traveled to seattle to speak with david clark, amazon's senior vice president of worldwide operations and asked how we should understand amazon's global fulfillment space. david: right now around the

world, we have over 150 million square feet of fulfillment space, hundreds of thousands of employees. when a customer places an order, we decide which facility it will come from. we try to ship it from as close as we can to the customer. but when you have a vast selection we have that we carry, over 50 million sku's, a two-day promise in the u.s. and so if you are in new york and need a product and the only place it is is in seattle or california, this is how you get it. from one of these cargo planes. or our partners. cory: we talk about lease facilities, does that make a difference? david: it really doesn't. they are all largely custom designed with our engineering fulfillment processes for and transportation in mind. it is whichever financial vehicle we choose is the best way to move forward with the asset. cory: how many airplanes have the fancy paint job? david: we have 24 airplanes and headed to 40 in 2018.

cary: are they all festooned with amazon? david: i think there are eight right now that do not. the first eight were rolled up quickly and did not get the design on. all of the planes since have it. cory: i wonder with the advantage of that is. david: we get to stand in front of it and it looks really cool. if you have cool toys like this, you need to put your name on it. cory: i imagine it helps promote the brand. david: it's amazing how may -- how many people pull it to the airport. i find these pictures all the time when people are traveling and you find the amazon plane on the tarmac. it is cool for customers and employees alike to see them flying around. cory: it has to be a reminder to the other air cargo companies fedex, ups, that you guys are , here and they have options. david: if you go to their places, you also see a lot of amazon boxes in those places. we have a great group of carrier partners around the world. i expect that to continue.

this is all about both innovating for customers and supplementing available capacity. again we have great partners and to continue to do so. y: how much of this will be fulfillment center to fulfillment center? david: almost all of this is package transport. some of this is direct package transport, meaning instead of having to go through a hub, we have a large volume going from the west coast to the east coast. we can fly directly point-to-point, take a step out of the process which allows us to make the cut off later for customers. on a two-day order, you might have an initial 12 hours or so to order and still get your product because we can go directly from point-to-point. cory: they could be a procter & gamble facility and you need to fly it from ohio to phoenix. david: maybe there is one unique particular record player stylus you need, and only one we have. it is in new york and it needs to go to san francisco. we will put that on a plane and

instead of having to fly it to else, wee or somewhere can put it on our plane from the east coast directly to the san francisco hub and get it to you. you have much longer to order it instead of going point-to-point. cory: from a domestic capacity, when you get to 40 planes, where will that be in terms of how much of the stuff you are moving? david: we are not specifically stating what that breakdown is. around our different carriers. cory: is that how you think about it? asid: we think about it more customer demand. we start everything with the customer and work backwards. what portion of customer demand is best suited to go through the path we create for faster delivery and work backwards from that. cory: when you negotiate with the carriers, i'm not talking about financial negotiations but how they will service you or the customer do you have those kinds , of discussions? we could use a route that goes

from point b to point d and we don't have one. david: we are in strategic partnerships with all of our carriers. in order to make the holiday work and to make our growth rates work it is important to , have a great relationship with them. we partner in almost every aspect of how the operations work with them. cory: in terms of the plane business itself, it is a complicated business involving leasing. i shout over the plane as it flies above me. i was thinking about the amazon balance sheets that give you advantages other companies might not have. david: our focus in the beginning has been all about the customer experience side of this, about enabling faster delivery and enabling additional capacity for customers. our approach to structuring the arrangements -- as you said, there is a lot of moving parts in the airplane business. we found a couple of great partners in atlas and atsg. them to come up

with a great path forward that fits both the company's needs, works great for the supplier, and provides a fantastic service to customers. ry: was this a typical amazon project that started with a memo hey, what if we try this? , david: somebody came to us and pointed out we had not realized exactly we have this much scale in air. we said this was right. it led to exactly what you said. we went out, wrote a six pager and a document about what would prime air product for air cargo for amazon customers look like, what would make it different, what would make it special for customers, what would enable lower prices and faster delivery for customers and ended up with , this. cory: is there a metric on that scale? david: as we continue to grow, optionswth provides us

to do to things that perhaps we could not do in the past. it could be like prime now, are one-hour delivery service. we had to reach a certain scale where the logistics infrastructure and technology , for fulfillment and delivery enabled one-hour service. we needed enough volume where moving from coast to coast made utilization and financial sense to be able to provide that service to customers. cory: is it a change in amazon's approach to local taxes , is that the thing that sort of propelled this whole business to get physically closer to the customer? david: i think we have always have the same approach. we follow all applicable laws and continue to spread across the u.s. i don't think anything particular to tax had to do this -- with this. this is really all about customers. emily: that with david clark, amazon senior vice president of worldwide operations with our very own cory johnson. china,s news out of sprite struck a deal with alipay and wechat to receive the

payments from massive chinese apps and their money. each have about half a billion users and dominate the payment space in china, making up about 90% of market share. coming up, more from our conversation with former twitter ceo dick costolo. he weighs in on how silicon valley can fight back against grow culture. plus, e-sports draws major investors including new england patriots owner bob kraft. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: back to my interview with dick costolo. in the second part of our conversation we discussed tech's ongoing gender problems amongst a string of sexual harassment allegations in the rising criticism of bro culture in cities -- silicon valley.

dick: i do get it is probably, actually maybe understated and underreported. it's probably way worse than we have seen so far. i think that again, to be blunt about it, i think in a lot of cases the investors in some of these venture firms are simply ignoring it and paying lip service to it but ignoring it , and funding some of these enterprises anyway. it is widely understood some of these issues were things that had been said in the background and yet new funds were raised and on and on and on. i think until the capital being committed by these lp's to these venture funds take it seriously and invest more directly in women running these firms and maybe gender specific funds or people of color funds, you will continue to see lip service paid to this because when push comes

to shove, the money is flowing into these funds anyway, even when they have heard some of these things. emily: we have seen a lot of long-winded apologies. do you buy it? dick: it is hard for me to comment on that stuff. i am not in either of the shoes, either the victims or the predators. i don't know. it is weird when, you know, it is a pattern, it's a pattern, it is a pattern and now that something comes out it is oh, gosh. that is a bit -- you look askew at that a little bit. emily: reid hoffman is encouraging a decency pledge, talking about a third-party hr function that would oversee the relationship between vcs and entrepreneurs. is that a realistic solution? dick: i just don't think that is sufficient.

that is like saying -- listen, i love reid and understand what he is trying to do. but the answers seem more dramatic to me. why aren't people funding women only gp? funds where the gp's are all women. there are certainly plenty of funds where the gps are all men and i do not see those things getting funded. instead of saying to the people who are already in these guys-only partnerships, do you promise to do x, y, z? i would like to see a lot more to, there are a lot of smart women in the valley. a lot of them are in the venture business. let's go enable a few of them to create their own funds and get after it. there are new funds watching all the time. people are able to get funds raised with what i would even go as far as to say are not records

you would look at and say i will fund that new venture. there are plenty of super qualified women out there. i would like to see more of the lp's and institutional investors putting their money where their mouth is on the venture side. emily: you are very focused on hiring women at chorus and at a smaller stage, making sure it is 50-50. what is your vision for the company? dick: it is a social fitness platform. our vision for the company is that in the real world the way people get healthy and live healthy lives is through social motivation and social accountability. yet online, most of the platforms are one-on-one. here is a program for you. and then you go and do it and you try to keep yourself motivated in isolation. chorus is about getting a team of people together to help each other stay motivated and doing what they are committed to do and help each other be successful. emily: when is it coming out?

it is in beta now. dick: it is in beta right now and we are working of the user dynamics. we have three or more things we really want to do so i would say this fall. emily: dick costolo, former ceo of twitter and ceo and cofounder of chorus fitness. facebook is taking another stab at virtual reality. the company plans to unveil a cheaper wireless device the company is betting will popularize vr the way apple did the smartphone. people familiar with the development say the headset will sell for as little as $200 and need not be tethered to a pc or a phone. coming up, interest in east sports has beene- on the rise in the last year. now professional sports teams are getting in on the action and investing millions. will hear from patriots owner robert kraft and activision ceo bobby kotick. if you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio. you can listen on the bloomberg radio app and sirius xm. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ emily: razor is shooting for a hong kong ipo that could value thanaming company at more to fund development of its own $5 million global phone. they are said to be developing a mobile device for hard-core gamers. they sell their products via e-commerce giant jd.com and alibaba. and in chains like best buy across the u.s. it is sold $1 billion in products globally in the last three years. sticking with gaming, activision blizzard announced the sale of its franchises in the overwatch league. the first sports league with city-based teams.

among the buyers, new england patriots owner robert kraft. i spoke with kraft and bobby kotick, activision ceo in sun valley, idaho. i started by asking kraft why he made the move to e-sports. robert: we love the infrastructure bobby has set up at activision blizzard. we have looked at a lot. the overwatch league, to us, having 30 million players at this point. just in the evolution really appeals to us and the concept of having a team in the new england region we know we have an we canstructure that really do a great job with the development of that. being part of something that can be globalized is very, very relevant to us. emily: i want to talk a little bit about the finances here. bobby, how long do you think it will take before the overwatch league can compete with the

leagues financially? bobby: look, it is important to us. we have a 26-year history of providing superior returns to our owners. so we look at owners like robert kraft as an important constituent that we need to do our very best to provide a financial return as quickly as we can. emily: bob, the franchise fee is $20 million over time. how much will it cost to operate a team in addition to that? bobby: we have not really gotten into the details of the operating costs. when you look at the way we structured the league, the operating costs should be lower than what you would see in other traditional sports. emily: let's talk about the future of e-sports. e-sports on television still has not been a great success. bob, why do you think you can get there? robert: we are looking at what is going on with sports

generally and watching the millennials and z generation and how they consume product on a mobile devices. but also how they don't watch traditional sports products the way our generations did. you see how much time is invested in playing these games and how they can connect with a global audience while doing it. it is unheard of to us 10 to 15 years ago. we really believe this is the future. we think the infrastructure that bobby has set up with something that the investment he made in this league is something that was very appealing to us. and a great way for us to enter this business. we looked at a lot of alternatives and we felt this was the best way to do it. emily: bobby, how much will players make? can you give us an idea of that?

bobby: the whole purpose for creating the overwatch league was in the service of celebrating our players and the commitment that our players make to this game in what is now 196 countries around the world. reason anot in a good professional overwatch player --uld not be rewarded and rewarded like professional athletes. our hope is that is what will happen and it will happen as quickly as possible. emily: what do you see is the biggest source of revenue for the future? tv rights, tickets, sponsorships? bobby: all of those will be revenues, but the opportunity is being able to partner with these incredibly successful owners and young entrepreneurs who built a lot of endemic teams that are really the high potential entrepreneurs that siezed on e-sports as a great opportunity. the combination of the professional experience likely get with robert kraft, the great

capabilities we see in some are endemic owners, that allows us to generate revenues in broadcast rights, sponsorships, licensing, venue fees, and a big part in what we are trying to do in building a local-based league is built the local affinity you see in traditional sports. so the boston enthusiasts, of boston players of overwatch will go, euros they can celebrate, role models that come from the professional athletes that will play our games. that is a really important part of what we are doing. emily: bloomberg has reported that tv networks including espn are bracing for a drop in ad revenue based on nfl ratings last season. how do you respond to that? bobby: we are here to talk about e-sports. robert: i will do it. you know, i think anyone who looks at last year understands the role the election had and

two newshat the networks, maine news networks are doing this year. after the election was over, the nfl was within 2% of ratings last year. i feel very confident we will have very strong ratings this coming year. you just wait and see and remember i told you that. emily: my conversation with activision ceo bobby kotick and robert kraft, chairman and ceo of the kraft group and owner of the new england patriots. group andthe craft the new england patriots. net neutrality issues being discussed in sun valley. the ceo of verizon's internet business gives us his take. >> i think there is a lot of energy around making net neutrality work. overall i think when you zoom verizon, willie johnson put out a really clear statement. they said look, verizon supports

net neutrality. it has been penciled in. congress should pass real laws around it and it is cemented. i think it is great that is a day of action that has been organized. all those things are really positive. emily: that does it for this edition of "best of bloomberg technology." next week, we will bring you interviews from the fortune brainstorm tech conference in aspen, colorado. do not miss our conversation with marty levine, instragram coo and the former u.s. commerce secretary. remember all episodes of , "bloomberg technology" are live streaming on twitter. check us out at bloomberg tech tv week days. that is all for now. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ david: are there many who said, i want to be the leading cellist in the world? yo-yo: in music there is no such thing as this is the greatest anything, because it is about learning forever. david: what about where you play? yo-yo: you don't have to be there. i don't have to be there. so if we are going to spend time together, let's make it count. >> would you fix your tie, please? david: well, people wouldn't recognize me if my tie was fixed, but ok. just leave it this way. alright. ♪