Hall of Fame Resort & Entertainment Company

Good morning and welcome to the Hall of Fame Resort and Entertainment Company's First Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. This conference call is being recorded and all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will open the conference up for questions and answers following the prepared remarks. I would now like to turn the conference over to Anne Grafis, Executive Vice President of Public Affairs. Please proceed.

Good morning and thank you for joining us for our First Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Our latest press release, supplemental slides, and 10Q were posted Friday evening after market hours. These documents can be found in the investor relations section of our website at h-o-s-r-e-c-o.com. After this brief introduction, Michael Crawford, President and CEO, will give us an overview of the quarter's results and update on our fiscal year priorities. Jason Crum, our CFO, will then provide detailed analysis of the quarter's financial results an update of our fiscal 2021 outlook. During today's call, we will make forward-looking statements that reflect the company's current expectations about future plans and performance. These statements rely on assumptions and estimates, and actual results may differ materially due to risks and uncertainties. I encourage you to read the full disclosure concerning forward-looking statements in the earnings press release. Additionally, please note that the company uses non-GAAP results to evaluate performance internally as detailed in the press release. We have posted a supplementary side deck summarizing the quarterly results. These slides can be accessed on our website as well and will be archived there along with a replay of this call. If you have additional questions after today's call, please contact me directly. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to President and CEO Michael Crawford.

Thank you, Anne. Good morning, everybody. Great to be with you today. I thought I'd start by speaking to just some broader business indicators we've experienced throughout Q1 and into Q2 that really continue to allow me to have a very positive outlook on the future of our company. Firstly, in Q1 and Q2, we're seeing significant improvement in leisure travel, which we had hoped would be the case. The US Travel Association is reporting Nine out of 10 people surveyed plan on taking a trip over the next six months. Hotel operators are reporting improving trends in rep are occupancy advanced bookings for leisure travel and some business travel as well. Live entertainment and events are coming back strong bookings are happening. They're being sold out in locations that are now allowing max capacity. I was very pleased last week to hear Governor Mike DeWine, the Governor of Ohio, talk about eliminating all of the COVID-19 health restrictions, related restrictions, the mask mandates, the reductions of capacity on indoor and outdoor events. This is all very positive for a couple of reasons. One, for our business, we're clearly wanting to welcome back and engage with guests and in social environments. seeing the COVID cases being reduced, watching vaccines being rolled out, and frankly, getting excited about people having the opportunity to protect their health is something that we're thrilled to see and excited to welcome those types of fans and activities back to our property. You'll recall a couple of weeks ago, I talked a little bit about the NFL draft and how successful that was, having a chance to meet with Commissioner Roger Goodell beforehand and talking about future partnership opportunities. And, in fact, in the coming days, we plan on meeting again to discuss those even further. But, you know, very proud of the fact that the NFL had an incredible 2020 season, playoffs, Super Bowl. The popularity of football has never been stronger, and we intend to leverage that in our business as we go forward. Also worth reminding everybody, we are a sports and entertainment company focused on investing at this time. We're investing in product. We're investing in experiences, relationships, partnerships, physical and virtual assets that will drive incredible new guests and fan engagement and shareholder value. You know, we entered 2021 with some very specific stated goals. We wanted to strengthen our balance sheet. We obviously wanted to obtain a construction loan and round out our capital stack to allow us to continue to build all these wonderful assets in Phase 2, but also run our business more broadly. Creating a destination, the Hall of Fame Village powered by Johnson Controls in Canton, Ohio, was a very high priority for us, and we started that. Building out our portfolio of media product, launching our gaming division with our Hall of Fantasy League, Continuing to build our slate of on-site programming, both sport and non-sport, and we've seen great progress on that, and I'll talk about that in a moment. And successfully building our hotel business and drive synergies with our on-site programming. The premise of our company is we drive synergy from one business unit to the other, creating uplift across our entire portfolio. And then lastly, we're a team and a team can be nimble and we can call audibles. And so we wanted to be flexible. And we wanted to focus on new business opportunities that create one of a kind experiences and product for our fans and guests to enjoy, while driving significant revenue and shareholder value for our company. And remembering, all of this was being done. And you know, the fact that we were focused on these things, in the middle of the world's most difficult time facing a global health pandemic, probably the most challenging time in the history of the world. The good news is we executed on many big plays in Q1, and we have continued that success entering into Q2. Before I talk about some of those accomplishments, though, I do want to just take a moment and talk about the recent SEC directive regarding the accounting treatment for all company warrants. We know this has caused a little bit of confusion for our investors. And while Jason will talk more about this, I'll just note a few key points. Number one, when this directive came out, the team was very proactive in making appropriate adjustments. We have always abided by SEC regulation, NASDAQ regulation, and we're a company that believes very much in transparency around what we do with our shareholders and investors. And so those warrants have been and will be converted into the liability section, and that's how we'll handle this going forward. The financial stability, though, of our company, its cash flows, our overall liquidity remain unchanged. We were the same company today as we were 15 minutes before that directive came out from the SEC, and we're very proud of the fact that, you know, while we restated earnings today, We did it in a very transparent and proactive way, and that's going to allow us to continue to build our company based on trust in the future with our shareholders and our investors. It's important to note that this was not only a situation that we faced, but hundreds of companies faced the same type of restatement. You know, rules change, regulations change, and we will always be on the forefront and understanding how those impact our company and communicating those to our investors and shareholders. So let me talk now about our Q1 accomplishments. And I'll start with our theme destination-based asset division. Look, the trend line for our hotel, our Hilton Doubletree, is progressing very well. We're headed in the right direction. Our synergistic business model is really starting to prove itself out where we have events and business travelers and others coming to the property, the destination, the village. We are allowing them to stay and eat and be accommodated in our hotel, and we expect that to continue to grow. And, in fact, we're seeing many now weeks and weekends throughout the summer and into our enshrinement events and a lot of the programming we'll be doing in Q3 and Q4, selling out this asset, which is fantastic. And so, you know, as I said earlier, the trend lines for hotel stays are improving with many across that industry. And it's also allowing us to create experience where we're hosting events and activities on-site on the Johnson Controls, the Hall of Fame Village powered by Johnson Controls, and still maintaining that very high-level guest experience in our own asset, our own hotel asset. Our Constellation Center for Excellence continues to progress with on-time and on-budget construction. And now we're in the tenanting process and the programming process. Very important we put the right companies in there to create an environment of excellence. Also the right programming, so clinics, coaches clinics, health clinics, things that will further the sport of football sport in general and create an environment for fans and guests to enjoy not only from a place to work and play but a place to be educated as well. And so look for more updates coming on that in the future months. But our plan is to have that open q3 by enshrinement and allow our guests to enjoy that experience in the western zone of our Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium. New fan events were booked, we announced several for the Hall of Fame village like the Women's Football Alliance Championships, our Highway 77 Music Festival, and many others. And we continue to hire top-notch talent focused on creating event opportunities, both leisure and business events, leveraging our assets on campus to the maximum. We started construction on a new fan experience. That's in our east end zone of Tom Pinson Hall of Fame Stadium. And this is a really important new experience. It provides food and beverage opportunity, sponsorship opportunity, event revenue. We can reorient the stadium, hosting content and concerts in multiple different ways that just didn't exist before. The goal of the company from our perspective is to always have an ROI mentality towards every investment we make. And so as we think about investing in one business vertical, we're always asking the question, How do we synergistically drive value through the other business verticals as well? Just another couple of things. We've started construction on the required infrastructure to support the other assets being built in Phase 2. That's stuff that you don't necessarily see but is critical for the long-term success, so roadway alignment, sewers, water, everything that you need to see that costs into the millions of dollars that sets up our ability to create the assets that we will be building the remainder of this year, our retail promenade, our center for performance, another hotel, our water park, our play action plaza, all of the things that will be built over the course of this coming year and into 2022 as well. In addition, our youth sports complex is being expanded with additional facilities to accommodate athletes and fans. and also allowing us to host even bigger tournaments and events, driving greater revenue and profitability in this line of business. Speaking of youth sports, I will just mention that Q1 was still a fairly restricted environment for our youth sports business. We did, though, see a significant increase in bookings for Q2 and beyond, and over the last several weekends, it's been amazing to be out at our youth football and sports complex watching thousands of athletes, families, and community members participate play at an extremely high level major events in the fields in the sport of soccer and cross and flag football. We even hosted a flag football event on behalf of the NFL as part of the NFL draft in Cleveland just a few weeks ago. Let me move on to our media business because this is really really taking off and you may have seen an announcement just a few moments ago a brand new partnership with Tupelo Honey, World Chase Tag, and ESPN to produce this tournament, this tag tournament that has become such a cultural phenomenon. We will be producing it around our campus, live to air, Q3, and that will happen around our enshrinement event in early August. So we're excited about yet another new partnership, leveraging our content, allowing us to bring expertise to bear, and creating value for our shareholders. But in Q1, we did sign several new media partnerships and have started the process of production and distribution of those previously announced deals, those things like the NFL Alumni Academy, our Inspired series, the Perfect 10 documentary that documents or depicts the 10 gentlemen who have won a Heisman Trophy and also went on to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And there's many more in the pipeline that we're excited about talking about in the near and long term. You know, the other thing that we continue to make great progress on with our media division is we have the ability and we've shown the ability to leverage our access to great content and intellectual property and be flexible and nimble in creating new product and experiences for our fans and guests to enjoy. And I'm talking about the non-fungible token business. There's been several releases that we've put out depicting how we engaged Dolphin Entertainment as our partner, how we signed a deal with Elite Holdings to begin our first non-fungible token releases to be centered around those 10 athletes that I just spoke about. And in fact, today, I'm very pleased to announce that later today, this afternoon, our first two assets will go on sale centered around one of the best wide receivers to ever play the game, in my opinion, Tim Brown, or touchdown Timmy, as people like to refer to him. He'll be on ESPN today talking about that. We have created, I think, with Dolphin, two amazing products, two different types of products. for fans to enjoy and own. The first of which is an original one-of-a-kind piece of digital art created by our artist Shane Griffin. And this will be a one-of-one, and it will be distributed through the OpenSea distribution channel beginning today, an auction style of distribution, and it will be on auction for several days. The second we're referring to is a digital player cart. And we've named this card Playbooks, right? Playbooks and football are very important. They create an opportunity to succeed. And as you see these products, there is a lot of movement. There is a lot of direction and focus. Playbooks puts you in the helmet of the player and shows you the career that that player has had. And by the way, it's not only showing you, it's being narrated by that player. So I could not be more excited about these one of a kind products. There's really nothing like these out on the market today. I think they will bring great value for our fans. It's always our goal to create product that no one else is doing. And I think they'll create generate and generate great revenue for us as a company, a new model of revenue that frankly, we never counted on as we conceived our business strategy. But again, to the credit of the team, we have been able to pivot and I believe deliver something that will be spectacular. Again, these go on sale today and will be on sale for the next several days. But we don't finish with one. Our goal is to launch two of these a month for the next several months and into the next several years. We think this is a new pipeline of creative product that is being highly demanded in the digital art space. And we are working with one of the best partners in that space in Dolphin Entertainment and hiring some of the best artists out there to help us create this new product. By the way, as I said, we have two new products. We're looking at a third new product. And so, always we want to be creative and give our guests something to be amazed by and something that they'll be proud to own. Moving into our gaming division, our third business vertical, as promised, we did launch our Hall of Fantasy Football League. It is the first franchise-based fantasy football model where participants can back or take a stake in a team. We announced our league with 10 teams. It'll be a 13-week season, three weeks of playoffs, and a championship game. I can't even begin to tell you how excited we were to get those out. I think the team locations, the names, and the brands have been amazing. very well received. They're very fun and engaging. We had staking start. The first day we staked out two of our teams three times and one of our teams two times. So we've actually had to stop the staking of a few teams multiple times, which is really encouraging given the fact that we haven't even announced the front offices or drafted the teams. And so there's a lot more that we're going to be doing to activate this league. Over the next couple of months, we'll be announcing those front offices. We'll be announcing the commissioner of our league. We'll be launching our mobile app and a lot of other activations. By the way, worth mentioning that we also launched our online merchandise store for this league. So yet another way for fans to own a piece of the league and support their team and drive revenue for us as a company. As I said, we have more big activations coming, and frankly, we're really excited about the direction that this league is going and the way in which fans are appreciating the difference in the model, allowing fantasy to become a team-based sport and allowing them to cheer for a team and own a piece of merchandise and really feel part of a community. Our goal is to continue to allow these communities to be built, and I think we're off to a very strong start in terms of how those communities are growing. You know, we've talked a little bit about this gaming vertical and what else could be included here. Obviously, esports is something that we're keeping an eye on and how we can be a host of tournaments and how we can leverage those to drive visitation to our destination, but also allow us to add value into our youth sports component of our business. and our media component of our business. And so we continue to take a look at that. But the next probable stop for us in gaming is sports betting. And you've heard me talk about this before. We have engaged with multiple different consultants, lobbyists, legislators to really understand the dynamic of sports betting. It was exciting to see last week the bill being introduced by the Senate that would allow for a vote to be taken on legalizing sports betting in Ohio. And as I previously also stated, we have been in very detailed discussions with potential sports betting partners. Our goal is to allow fans to engage in ways in which they want with the sport of football and other sport in general and sports betting just enhances that engagement from our perspective. We look forward to having potentially an on-site presence, a sports betting presence at our destination in Canton at the Halton Village Powered by Johnson Controls, our Fantasy League where teams can play each other virtually, potentially sports betting around that, sponsorship activity, a lot of different ways in which we can bring value to a sports betting partner and a sports betting partner can complement and enhance what we're doing as a company as well. Finally, over q1, we continue to sign new partner and sponsorship deals. But we were very pragmatic around these types of deals, meaning when we need to have engagement with companies throughout the company's lifecycle, we want to have meaningful discussions and sign partners that will help enhance and strengthen our service and complement the product that guests will experience as they visit our destination. And, frankly, now we're beginning to focus on strategic sponsor partners across all of our business units, media, gaming, and the destination-based assets, with many more of those to come. We're looking forward to announcements around new retail tenants, sponsor partners, operational partners, and I think that will only enhance and strengthen our company's core capabilities of execution and delivering a one-of-a-kind product for our guests to enjoy. So a very exciting Q1, a lot of production, and heading into Q2, we see that momentum growing even more with those broad global indicators that I talked about with people's desire to get back out and be social in destinations and engage with great product, and there couldn't be more excitement around the 2021 NFL football season. So let me now stop for a moment. I'll turn it over to Jason and have him provide our financial result updates for Q1 and beyond.

All right. Thank you, Mike. And hello, everyone. I do just want to comment that I understand some of our web participants have lost audio communication for a few minutes. We apologize for that, and we thank everyone for your patience. The replay will be available on our website soon after the call concludes. that will help you catch up on any comments you may have missed. So with that done, back to our regularly scheduled program here. We filed our first quarter fiscal 2021 Form 10-Q post-market on Friday, May 14th. That document can be found on the SEC website as well as our investor relations site. Please note, based on a late reclass of items, there is a difference in a few buckets on the cash flow statement between our 10Q and press release. Please rely on the file 10Q for the most updated line item detail. To avoid any confusion, we will reissue the press release later today. Now, moving on to our financial results. First quarter total revenue of $1.9 million was comparable to the prior year. With hotel revenue from our Doubletree Hotel that opened in Q4 2020, being offset by reduced events due to the COVID-19 global health pandemic. First quarter adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $5.1 million, which is also comparable to the prior year. The EBITDA loss was driven by property operating and hotel operating expenses as we continue to invest in building the groundwork for success across all three of our business verticals. As Mike already noted, We were affected by the recent SEC statement for the accounting treatment of warrants. Our financial statements reclassified the warrants as liabilities at fair market value in each reporting period, both with the amended 10K that was filed last week, as well as the 10Q filed on Friday. The company will remain in compliance with all of its financial covenants under its credit facilities, even after giving effect to the restatement. Due to this accounting change, we will show increased liabilities and expense if the company's stock price increases. While the line items on the financial statements will vary based on the company's stock price, I want to reiterate that it does not impact our cash flow from operations, our cash and cash equivalents, or our liquidity for all prior and future periods. On the balance sheet, we finished the quarter with a cash balance of approximately $69 million, compared to approximately $40 million at the end of 2020. Both of these values are inclusive of our restricted cash balances. The increase in cash was primarily driven by the follow-on offering of common stock in February, plus warrants from the November offering being exercised during the quarter. we have been and will continue to work diligently to optimize our capital structure. Our net debt balance was $102 million in the first quarter, as reflected in our notes payable, compared to about $99 million at the end of 2020. Now transitioning more specifically to construction. As we discussed last quarter, we expect investment in Phase II development to exceed $300 million. The targeted capital funding sources continue to include both public and private financing. As we also talked about on our last call, we're taking a very disciplined approach to the financing process. With our equity raises completed, our focus continues to be on construction financing. Consequently, there are still no immediate plans to raise additional common equity. We will provide an update when the terms of the construction loan are finalized and are still targeting a signed construction loan by the end of the second quarter. We remain really excited about 2021 and the potential for the developments that we have announced so far this year. In terms of the financials, we are still not providing specific financial guidance for 2021, given the uncertainties that remain with COVID. I will reinforce, though, that our expectations have not materially changed from our last earnings call. We still expect revenue to increase in 2021, driven by a few key factors, which include, but are not limited to, first, having the Doubletree open for a full year after opening the hotel in November of 2020. Second, revenue coming from the incremental events that have been booked at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium, our sports complex, and the Doubletree. While COVID is expected to impact our event schedule and attendance in the short term, as we act in accordance with all state and local health regulations, we're hopeful for a return of fans representing a substantial percent of our capacity while we host sporting events, concerts, and festivals in the second half of this year. We're seeing positive data points in recent months with both the hotel and our events. And third, We also expect the media vertical to contribute to revenue with the launch of NFTs here in the second quarter, as well as later in the year from partnership agreements that we have already announced. In terms of our EBITDA, we expect profitability to be marginally better than 2020, but 2021 will continue to be an investment year. I want to reiterate again that our longer-term goalposts still have not moved. And by the time construction on phase two is fully complete and operational, we continue to target $150 million of annual run rate revenue and approximately $50 million of annual run rate adjusted EBITDA across our three key pillars, which again are destination-based assets, our media platforms, and our gaming verticals. We continue to execute on our financial priorities that we have communicated in the past and are committed to maintaining a balance sheet that provides the financial flexibility through our growth phase that will ultimately deliver long-term value to all of our shareholders. Now let me turn it back to Mike who will provide some closing comments.

Great. Thanks, Jason. Let me just say in conclusion, you know, I have a great deal of optimism and confidence hope for where we're headed as a company. I was just off the phone with our primary construction lender this morning. We have line of sight on how to conclude and have a term sheet in place in the very near term. They feel good about where we are as a company and how we're continuing to produce results and grow. But we haven't stopped there. We've added new consultants that are helping us look at private and public financing to round out our capital stack. Our goal is to have everything that we need in place, including our equity that we've raised over the last year, to really ensure the long-term success of our company, not only building assets but creating new experiences and product for our guests to enjoy. It's exciting to see how the world is evolving. We're focused on the business opportunities that are now presenting themselves across our entire company. The world is traveling. Live events are being booked and being sold out. Consumers are looking for one-of-a-kind product to engage with and purchase. I think we're well-positioned in the near, mid, and long term to drive great value for our shareholders. I hope what you're seeing is a team that is dedicated, is focused, and has the ability to deliver results. While we're investing in assets, creating new media content, launching gaming, and we're still looking for those revenue opportunities that are going to drive value for our company. And it's also a team that I'm incredibly proud of. They have done this in the time of the worst health pandemic to ever hit the world. They've stayed positive. And we continue to add great team members that are helping execute against our strategy and being very nimble and opportunistic to drive new business development along the way. We look forward to keeping everyone informed about the great progress we expect to achieve in the coming months. And now I'll just stop and open it up for questions. Thank you.

Thank you. At this time, we will conduct a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment while we pull for our first question. Our first question comes from Jack Vandere with Maxim Group. Please proceed.

Great. Hi, Michael. Hi, Jason. Congrats on the continued momentum. It's great to see. Thanks for taking my questions. So maybe a first question for Michael. Follow up on your hotel business update that you provided. Revenues clearly are picking up sequentially in the first quarter from the fourth quarter. I know it's still early stage. kind of business and then plus on top of the fact that there's COVID and there's a lot of things going on in the world that makes this not a normalized environment. But revenue is picking up, which is good to see. Why don't you just talk a bit more about hotel occupancy and bookings levels, kind of how they've trended in the fourth quarter or first quarter and then kind of how you see that playing out through the second quarter and throughout the remaining balance of this year just in terms of occupancy and, you know, are all the rooms ready and open for business? And how do you expect those rooms to be filled?

Hi, yeah, hopefully everybody can still hear us. I just want to make sure technical difficulty wise. I'm not sure if we still have Mike on the line. But Jack, in terms of, you know, I got Jason, sorry.

Sorry, I was I was doing the thing that most people are doing during COVID. I was talking while I was on mute. So I apologize. No, no. And Jack, I gave a fantastic answer. So I hope you like that. No, let me go back. I'll be specific here. Fourth quarter, we had a soft opening of this asset, right? We didn't open all the rooms. We wanted to make sure their service levels were where they needed to be and comparable for a Hilton Doubletree product and, frankly, comparable for our product. As we entered into Q1, we really did start to see the pickup of leisure travel, believe it or not, weekend stays, some small event bookings. But remember, this hotel is uniquely positioned in Canton, Ohio. It has the largest ballroom and meeting facilities of any hotel in the region. And it was a hotel that was very beloved. It's the only downtown hotel in Canton. It had been let go, degraded pretty severely. We have brought this back to being a world-class downtown hotel, the best product, in my opinion, in the region, and very comparable with big city hotel product as well. What we're seeing now is business travel is slowly coming back. Leisure travel is coming back stronger. But events, you know, weddings, birthdays, meeting events, et cetera, are starting to book strongly. And now with no capacity restrictions, we anticipate those to come on even more strong. We have multiple millions of dollars on the books for the remainder of this year in the event booking business for the hotel. That drives room nights Monday, Sunday through Thursday, right? And that's usually where you need the most in terms of incremental capacity and filling that capacity. Weekends trending very strong, launching great new food product. So I feel very good about where the hotel is trending. And, by the way, as we continue to build events on site, on campus, music concerts, enshrinement, college football games, kickoff to the NFL season, et cetera, we're booking that hotel and selling it out well in advance for multiple weeks throughout this entire year. So we're encouraged about the trend line there, and, frankly, we're encouraged about building a new hotel on-site as well because we think that we'll be able to host the remainder of the capacity that's going to the other hotels and market, and we'll be able to create those experiences for our guests on-site too.

Awesome. Well, as you said, a fantastic answer. I hope that was as good as your first one. I appreciate the color there. Maybe the next topic, just to dig into, there's a lot to chew on here, so I'll try not to ask too many questions. So the first one I'll talk about next is on the NFT offerings, which is, you know, the latest and greatest craze going on in the marketplace. The demand for it has been absolutely astonishing. And you guys are really – it's good to see you guys actually taking advantage and leveraging the opportunity. So you have two products announced so far. I think you teased that there may be a third on the way. But just maybe before we back up, I'd like to get your perspective more on just, you know, general thoughts and planning process behind the scenes. You know, how did you determine to select, you know, OpenSeas as the exchange that you chose? And any initial expectations you may have regarding just buyer interest in general for for these first NFP product offerings?

Sure. I'll start with that last question first. You know, we believe that buyer interest is fueled by the popularity of whatever the subject is that you're putting out, right? And professional football, and the greatest to ever play professional football, certainly has a large pool of buyers out there. when you talk about someone like Tim Brown who played at a very elite college like Notre Dame with a huge fan base, played with the Raiders, huge fan base, you know, you have to believe that there are a lot of people out there that would love to own a piece of that history, that digital memorabilia. And so, you know, we started with, we believe we have access to exclusive content and content referencing not only the the Pro Football Hall of Fame archives where we can mine that content and create digital NFTs from that. But athletes, you know, and the athletes telling their stories and the moments that were the most meaningful in their careers. When you look at the product that we have put out in partnership with Dolphin, which is, by the way, why we partnered with Dolphin, one of the best in the business at what they do, sourcing some of the greatest artistic talent out there. I got to tell you, For me and some of the companies I've worked for in the past, it starts with great product. When you provide great product, people will want to own and they'll want to have a piece of that. I think what you're seeing in the NFT space today is everyone is rushing. Everyone is rushing to get something out. Every day there's a new picture, a digital picture of a playing card or an old-time card, and people put it out as an NFT. What we've created is a digital experience, an immersive experience that takes you through the career of a player listening to their voice depict how they felt while they were playing. No one else is doing that. And so you know, these player cards, more affordable, more of a volume opportunity for people to own a piece of that digital non fungible token world. And then this one of a kind piece created by Shane Griffin, who has really done some phenomenal things with the celebrity world in the NFT space. I think is just going to be fantastic. So we think this is going to be a great new revenue source for us. We're not an NFT company. We're a content company that has the ability to leverage that content across multiple business verticals. And we've added this into our media division. And it's been a process. And we've learned a lot. OpenSea, we feel like, is the safest it allows tracking and connecting digitally to the piece so that you can trust your piece cannot be replicated, or if it is, it won't be done in a way that, you know, it can't be done in a way that reflects the token being attached to the piece, which is the safeguard around all of this. It also, frankly, allows the piece, if the buyer chooses to sell it downstream. It allows a platform for that to happen. And as many of these deals are structured, every sale of that piece and the resale of that piece, our company gets a percentage of. So this is a really unique model. It's a very different way to express content. And I think we've, frankly, I think we've hit two, we've thrown for two touchdowns here with the first two products we put out. And we've got more to come. Earl Campbell is right on the heels of this, and we've got many, many more athletes signed up. And our goal is, as I said, to put out a couple of these a month and continue to evolve and create new products as well. So for our guests and fans to enjoy.

Great. I appreciate the color there. And let me just ask one more question, then I'll hop back in the queue. And the next topic I just want to touch on is the Hall of Fantasy League. Can you just remind us maybe what the next steps are of things to be announced? You know, I think you mentioned the front office personnel is something that still needs to be decided. But, you know, fast forward to the NFL season and your fantasy league goes live in the fall. From a high level, can you maybe also talk about the business model and the monetization kind of aspect of this fantasy league or anything you can share at this moment?

Sure. Sure.

So the activations that are forthcoming, some in the near term and some over the summer and as the league starts, obviously, as I talked about, the staking of teams and teams being staked out, we found that to be sort of a reinforcement of our belief that this is going to be a really unique experience where fans want to back and support a team, a geographic-based team with a fun brand and a logo and, you know, really get behind and cheer for their virtual teams versus the individual fantasy sports that most people play. So we will be announcing our front offices. We're in contract with many of those professional fantasy players that will lead our teams and then complement those with NFL players that will offer subject matter expertise. We look to announce those in the next month. Then we look to launch our mobile app. This is really the way in which fans will be able to engage through our community, give input to draft, give thoughts, hear thoughts from the experts on why things are being done. That should launch in June. We'll continue to enhance our website. And then in August, we'll conduct our draft. And we're still debating if that's going to need to be virtual or that can be during our enshrinement event and have some of the excitement around that help launch the draft of the individual teams. And then a podcast that will allow our fans to, you know, on a regular basis get updates on their team's performance and the league itself. In terms of monetization, clearly we will have a percentage of all the backing for each of the teams. We'll have a percentage of the online merchandise store sales, which continue to go as we speak. There are sponsorship opportunities for this league that we're exploring, media opportunities for this league, a podcast, et cetera, that we're exploring. And one that is still out there for me as sports betting is legalized, again, where teams can play each other virtually, you can imagine fans wanting to place wagers on those games. And so again, We think there are several different points of monetization for this first year. Moving forward, on-site events at the Hall of Fame Village, powered by Johnson Controls, generating room nights, food and beverage, et cetera. There's a lot of ways in which we'll continue to look to monetize our Hall of Fantasy League across all of our business verticals. But we're feeling good about the fact that we're building our communities. The popularity of this is growing. Frankly, we've got some really fun, cool marketing videos out there on our website, on YouTube. So if you haven't seen those, there's a league video that describes how to play, and then each individual team has their own promo videos. There will be more of that type of paid marketing going on. And as we bring on our front offices, we'll expect them to do sale and marketing effort for us as well. So it's exciting. I couldn't think of a better way to launch our gaming division, and we'll continue to build off of that.

Fantastic. You know, I'm a fancy football lover myself, and I look forward to keeping in touch there and seeing how this thing plays out. But that's it for me. I'll hop back in the queue again. It's all momentum. Congrats on that. Thanks.

Great. Thanks, Jack. Appreciate it.

At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Anne Grafis. Please proceed.

Again, I want to thank everyone for joining us today and apologize for the technical difficulties with audio that we've had. We will have replay on our website. to share all, but in light of that, I'd like to ask a few questions that have come in that you may have not heard Mike address during his original comments. The first being, there have been several high-profile deals signed within the media vertical at Hall of Fame Resort and Entertainment Company. What is the timing of these projects and the revenue projections associated with it?

I would say the timing is all project dependent. As you heard this morning, the World Chase Tag Project that we'll be producing with Tupelo Honey and ESPN will be aired in Q3 of this year, so it'll start to generate revenue in the very near term. We are in production of The Perfect Ten. This is the docuseries that we've talked about depicting the ten gentlemen who've won a Heisman Trophy and also gone on to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. We think that that will sell and be aired in 2022. So there really is, you know, our goal is to continue to fill our pipeline with projects that become near-term revenue, mid-term, and long-term, and every single year replenish that pipeline with new and exciting product and experiences for our guests to enjoy. remembering that the non-fungible tokens, the NFTs, are a part of our media division, albeit not traditional media, but digital media that we will be selling today. Tim's NFTs will go on sale later this afternoon on the OpenSea Network. You can see more about that on our website, our Hall of Fame Resort and Entertainment Company website. There will be more media pushed out. Tim will be on ESPN talking about it. So, very excited about creating new revenue opportunities in our media division. And, frankly, we've got a world-class team in Scott Langerman and Olivia Steyer, and we're adding in terms of leadership, and we're adding new players there almost on a regular basis to drive business development opportunities. We relaunched, or I should say we launched our brand, Hall of Fame Village Media, just over the past week. And we're partnering with companies like NFL Films and ESPN and Sports Illustrated and others. And so we feel very confident about the direction we're heading and filling our pipeline with great product for our guests and fans to enjoy.

Great. This is our last question, and it is related to the sports betting legislation that's currently being entertained within the state of Ohio. Can you expand a bit more on your thoughts about the legislation and how big an impact that legislation passing could have within our company?

Well, from what we're seeing, the legislation is very fair. It's very balanced. I think the legislators have done a good job creating what they refer to as a free market approach. We think we have a unique position and a unique location, if you will, to offer a sports betting partner. We have access to content, the best players to ever play the game. We are a sports and entertainment company, and so there's an ability to create value for a sports betting partner in our media division, our gaming division, and with a physical asset in our destination, our Hall of Fame Village, powered by Johnson Controls, destination in Canton, Ohio. Okay. We keep close eye. We have employed consultants and working with lobbyists to keep us fully engaged and informed. I know the bill came out a week ago, and there is some work being done on that, and I know that there is hope that that bill will be passed in the late June timeframe, and what I'm being told is then to be implemented in January of 22, and just in time for the Super Bowl and the playoffs and other things, which we're excited about. But I do think, as I've always said, you know, sports betting is not this ugly thing that people used to have to do, and frankly, some still do on the, you know, in the gray market where it's not legal. And so what we believe is with technology advancements, micro betting opportunities, it really does enhance the way in which fans and guests engage with sport in general. And it's our responsibility to create those opportunities for our fans and our guests. We have planned a destination that we think is spectacular as part of our property in Canton, Ohio, our destination there. And we have planned multiple other ways to engage with a sports betting company. Our goal, as I said, on our last earnings call is to have a sports betting partnership in place prior to the bill being passed. But we'll see. We continue to push forward on that, and we have a lot of interest, and I think there are partners out there that have a lot of interest in us. And so it's exciting that Ohio will be having an opportunity, given that every surrounding area state touching Ohio has legalized betting, for our citizens and particularly the fans, sports fans, to engage with sports betting in that way. So more to come, but, you know, we maintain a very close eye on this, and this is a key priority for us as a company in terms of new business development.

Great. Thank you, Mike. With that, that concludes our call for today. I want to thank all for your continued interest in the company and for taking the time to learn more. Have a great afternoon.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. You may now disconnect your lines and have a great day.