Hello fellow Hogs,

First off, a big SOOOOOOOIE! It’s Hog season, baby. This week marked the first official week of the Hogs 2024 season prep. Good times. My trusty collaborator, Bayesian Baller, and I have been discussing these plans for a few months. It all started during our Spring stream, where we tested out different social media videos. I think, to some extent, Krause House has always been about content—whether it's idea content, video content, or blockchain content. The whole basis for what we do has been an attempt to convey this new, novel idea of what being a fan can look like. More specifically, Bayesian and I tinkered with good ole' fashioned social media content. We had some success, but as we created various reels around the NBA, we discussed ways we could apply these types of content to how we run the Ball Hogs.

The first summer of the Ball Hogs involved us making a big splash, showing what fan engagement could look like if it were in the hands of a fan. We created the "Pig Pen," where we adopted dedicated fans within an hour or two prior to gameday by creating an environment and atmosphere that was fun for the families coming to watch basketball. Last summer, we kept the momentum going in the fan department. Working alongside DLuxe, we partnered up with Big Brothers/Big Sisters and the Boys and Girls Clubs in various cities to "pack the pig pen." I would argue that last year's main story was the rocket ship force of Bayesian Baller.

Flashback to May 2023.

I was driving back to my hometown late at night and received a call from our head coach and NBA legend, Rick Barry. There's no such thing as a short conversation with Rick, but luckily for him, I had about an hour left in my drive, so I answered.

"Hello?"

"Jonathan! How are ya? Rick Barry here."

Inner dialogue: "Yes. I see your name on my phone."

Actual dialogue: "Yeah! Hey, Rick, what’s up?"

"I just got an email from the Big3, and they told me the draft is tomorrow. They sent me a list of people eligible, and I have 24 hours to figure out who the hell I’m gonna pick. Jodie has some ideas, and I haven’t been able to get hold of Leandro, but I’m up shit’s creek here."

The "Jodie" and "Leandro" Rick was referring to were our team captains, Golden State Warriors championship winner, Leandro Barbosa, and Jodie Meeks, who won a championship with the Toronto Raptors in 2019.

"Rick, do you remember Christian from last year? He was the one who made some of those scouting reports for a few weeks."

"Yeah. I remember him."

Rick didn't just say, "Yeah. I remember him." He went on for a little bit about how overwhelmed he was. I’d say 5 minutes. But I’ll spare you, dear reader.

"Yeah. So anyway, I think we should call Christian. He's just the guy for this. Let me loop him into this conversation."

I quickly initiated a 3-way call, and Christian and Rick were off to the races. Long story short, within 8 hours, Christian had whipped up a full draft plan based on what our team needed and was on the Zoom call with Ice Cube, Jeff Kwantinetz, and all the other players and captains for the draft. By the end of the season, Christian was unofficially a valued member of the team and spent game day on the bench with the players + Rick as an "assistant coach."

Quite the meteoric rise for the Krause crew. In a certified bear crypto/NFT market, we still managed to become the most involved ownership within the league, earning the respect of the league founders AND the Ball Hogs. Pretty slick stuff.

At the end of last season, I was 40% unsure about summer 2024 and 60% out on Big3 involvement. Of course, I wanted to be involved, and it sucked to think about letting all the momentum we’d generated in 2022 and 2023 pitter out, but at the same time, I really didn’t know what approach to take in 2024 on the fan angle. During 2022, we sort of hit a glass ceiling with what we could do in the fan engagement realm. DLux did a fantastic job building non-profit relationships so we could have fans in the fan section. Shannon helped bring in the NEAR foundation, and they worked with developer Greg to build out a Ball Hogs pick 'em app, which was very cool. And don’t forget Mario, who worked with Mochi who used content filmed by our very own social media wizard, Joy DeAngela, filmed each week under the Big3 basket to provide folks with footage to make their own Ball Hogs content on Instagram and TikTok.

The only problem was that the league itself didn’t give us much of a window to help properly market what we were doing, so the engagement wasn’t what we had hoped. In addition, ticket sales in the league were a bit difficult. In 2022, it wasn’t difficult for the Big3 to allocate us a large number of tickets to give to non-profit groups, however, 2023 was a lot harder. The league went back to NBA arenas from the small arena in Frisco they occupied in 2022. We were able to have tickets to give to groups, but they were consistently not-so-prime real estate that we were accustomed to.

A quick disclaimer before I go on. I don’t want to give the Big3 league too little credit. I am absolutely eternally grateful to Cube, Jeff, VP Sean, and especially event coordinator Kari. Without them and the access they gave us, we would just be normal lame NFT bros holding onto an NFT like a trophy. It was in no way insinuating that they were intentionally holding us back. They are a relatively small team doing big things, and we asked a lot of them every week, and they consistently did everything they could to help our endeavors. Most of the time, they were able to deliver, but I think it’s entirely reasonable and understandable that what we were doing as a semi-outside group wasn’t their top priority. Bottom line, thank you, Big3. We love you.

Okay, back to the narrative.

At the end of last summer, I wasn’t super sure about what this summer looked like. Personally, I found out in November that my wife was pregnant and her due date is the middle of July, prime Big3 season. So it was likely that I was out, and I didn’t know if anyone in Krause House would want to tackle it.

How foolish of me to underestimate THE Bayesian Baller.

In the middle of our content stream, it dawned on us that we should combine the skills and experiences that we’d picked up over the past two summers, and join forces to produce the biggest summer of Ball Hogs basketball ever. I’ll let Bayesian explain this one.

“Hey Bayesian.”

“Hey Jon.”

“What is this? A transcript?”

“No. I’m handing over this newsletter to you because I’m tired of typing and I’m trying to watch this dumb vampire show. Have you watched True Blood? It’s kind of dumb, but also good. I’m in season 4. Don’t ask me how quickly I got here.”

“Haha. Ok. So what do you want me to do, just start typing?”

“Yeah. Scroll up if you need context. I’m signing off though.”

“Haha. Ok man. By the way, did you see the Big3 just sold a new expansion team for $10 million?”

“Wait, what?!”

Yep, you heard that right. Historic things are happening over at the Big3 and even bigger things are happening with the Ball Hogs this summer. After the major progress that Jon and I have seen separately on--and-off the court over the past two summers, we decided it was time to join forces and go all out in what is expected to be our team’s (and community’s) most highly anticipated season to date.

When we first purchased the Ball Hogs back in 2022, they were coming off of a 1-5 campaign and had just finished in dead last place in 2 of the previous 3 seasons. Fast forward to 2023, the Ball Hogs won a franchise-record 4 games, finished in a tie for 6th place, and came within an infuriating tiebreaker of making their first-ever playoff berth. In other words from Year 1 to Year 2 of our work with the team, the Ball Hogs experienced the largest season-over-season improvement of any team in the BIG3.

Now heading into 2024, we want to keep that momentum rolling and we are as confident as ever that this will be the summer that the Ball Hogs will earn their long-awaited, first-ever playoff appearance. Pause for a second and think about that... When we take the Hogs from dead last to the playoffs in just three seasons, the story of Krause House and its impact on performance, branding, and culture will literally write itself.

And now with team valuations sky-high and the league exploring new expansion models, we legitimately have a unique opportunity to earn a significant return on our initial investment in less than three calendar years. This would be an enormous stamp of validation for Krause House and our community’s ability to turn around a franchise’s prospects nearly overnight.

Between my passion for coaching, scouting, and analytics, and Jon’s commitment to content, merchandising, and fan engagement, we look forward to establishing a winning culture, building a powerhouse brand, and bringing excitement to lots of Jerry's and Ball Hogs fanatics in Summer 2024.

Let’s have ourselves an awesome summer and make some history along the way!

Yours truly, Uncle Jon x Bayesian Baller