Former MLB star Alex Rodriguez discusses business career at Rally conference

Alex Rodriguez (photo/Fox Sports)

Alex Rodriguez spent 22 years as one of the greatest—and perhaps most polarizing—baseball players of his era.

Now, as CEO of A-Rod Corp., he is a business leader who transitioned into the world of real estate investment, tech startups and team ownership. On Tuesday, Rodriguez took the stage at the Indiana Convention Center as an afternoon keynote speaker at the Rally innovation conference.

In a conversation with Meghan Chayka, co-founder of Canada-based hockey data and analytics firm Stathletes, Rodriguez discussed the lessons he learned during his baseball career and how he used introspection to become a successful business leader.

Rodriguez emphasized the importance of long-term vision and finding the right people in building successful ventures. He also highlighted his investments in sports and real estate, including his part-ownership of the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves and the WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx.

The 14-time MLB All-Star and 2009 World Series champion is also a baseball television analyst with Fox Sports. He worked for ESPN from 2018 to 2023.

“I think a lot of entrepreneurs early on, they underestimate what they can do in the long-run, but overestimate what they can do in the short term,” Rodriguez said. “So, they’re thinking transactional, and I think when you have a two- or three- or four-decade approach, you have a better sense of how to build a business.”

The Lynx, he noted, brought in $2 million last Saturday when Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever played in front of a sold-out crowd in Minneapolis. He said the team last year made about $100,000 per game, and he views the growth of women’s sports today as “just the tip of the iceberg.”

“When you look at the forecast, and let’s say we did a five- or 10-year forecast, you can make a very, very strong argument that your return on capital is going to be greater on women’s sports than men’s sports,” Rodriguez said.

He also described one of his biggest misses post-baseball—not investing $250,000 in Uber when it was just a startup—and how he is looking to create what he thinks is the next big thing in sports ticketing, an app called Jump that would let people upgrade to better seats at games after people close to the court or field have left.

“I used to have to trick the ushers to sneak in because I didn’t have the 10 bucks or the five bucks to get in the arena, and it would frustrate the heck out of me that I would look down and all these seats were empty,” he said recalling his childhood in Florida. “Like, what a waste of money.”

Rodriguez got his start in big-league baseball as an 18-year-old in 1994, a year after the Seattle Mariners selected him as the No. 1 pick in the MLB Draft.

During a career in which he won three American League Most Valuable Player Awards, he twice broke the record for the largest sports contract ever signed, first in 2000 when he signed a 10-year, $252 million contract with the Texas Rangers, and then in 2007 when he re-signed with the New York Yankees for 10 years and $275 million.

Despite finishing his career with 696 home runs, the fourth-most all time, Rodriguez has been shut out of the National Baseball Hall of Fame after he admitted to using banned performance-enhancing drugs. A decade ago, he received a year-long suspension and missed the entire 2014 season.

He told the Rally conference crowd that he regrets finishing four home runs short of 700. And he noted that he finished fifth all-time for most strikeouts as a batter (2,287).

“That means only four people in the history of mankind have failed more than me,” Rodriguez said. “So, that means I have a PhD in failing. But I like to tell my daughters all the time, you know, that daddy also has a master’s in getting back up, and we’re all going to get knocked on our butts.”

Rodriguez discussed how he got to know himself better and understand his goals in life. He described sitting in front of a fireplace and just thinking about his ideas and where he wanted to go. He said that introspection has helped him succeed in his career and life after baseball.

“Some of the criticism, or just what someone may think, may be real, but I’ve changed so much in the last 15 years through some of my big fall-downs and meltdowns that I’ve had,” Rodriguez said. “I’ve had an opportunity to turn the lens inward and do a lot of work on myself.”

Rally, which is organized by Indianapolis-based Elevate Ventures, continues through Wednesday. The event, which aims to spur Indiana’s entrepreneurship and innovation activity, is aimed at business leaders, innovators and investors from both within and outside of Indiana.

Last year’s Rally conference drew just over 3,110 attendees. About 60% of them came from Indiana, while the other 40% were from out of state or from other countries. Organizers are aiming for similar attendance this year.