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Earvin “Magic” Johnson
Jesse Grant/Getty Images for SUPERCHARGED
Financial inclusion is a theme at this year’s Money20/20 conference, which is considered the largest convention for the North American financial technology industry.
“I believe you can do well and do good at the same time,” said Earvin “Magic” Johnson, the basketball legend turned successful entrepreneur, who helped kick off Money20/20 in Las Vegas on Sunday. Speaking to an audience filled with hundreds of fintech executives, Johnson noted his success with
Starbucks
(ticker: SBUX)–he helped bring the coffee chain to Harlem — as well as the Los Angeles Dodgers.
“We wanted to drive ROI (return on investment) but we also gave contracts to minority firms to [help] build their business at the same time. We were fighting for scale and growth. We were able to help them achieve that growth,” said Johnson, during a Q&A with Brad Wiskirchen, founding CEO and current senior vice president and general manager of fintech Kount, and Scarlett Sieber, Money20/20’s chief strategy & growth officer.
Johnson says he is investing in infrastructure now. “Black and brown children,” he said, had to learn virtually during the recent Covid-19 pandemic that caused the closure of schools nationwide. Minority children struggled because they didn’t have access to broadband. “A lot of kids had to go to
Starbucks
or Burger King just to get online,” Johnson said.
Johnson is an investor of JLC Infrastructure, which is teaming up with
Qualcomm
(QCOM) to bring broadband, connectivity and internet access to major cities. “We will partner and start building some of those smart cities in urban and rural areas because rural area kids were hurt, too,” he said. “We won a contract for New Orleans and plan to take it across the country. We need everyone to have a level playing field.”
Johnson is one of several executives from major companies, including
Mastercard
(MA),
Amazon
.
com (AMZN),
Alphabet
(GOOGL), Plaid,
Robinhood Markets
(HOOD), and
Visa
(V), that are scheduled to appear at Money20/20 this week. More than 8,000 people, including financial technology entrepreneurs as well as venture capital and private equity execs, are attending the conference, which is held yearly at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, to discuss advances in the fintech industry. The rock band, Journey, is also scheduled to appear Tuesday night.
Money20/20 is known as one of the biggest deal-making hot spots for fintech executives. The conference, which was canceled last year because of the pandemic, will run until Wednesday. This year, the convention has attracted roughly 2,300 companies. This year’s roughly 8,000 attendees is down from the more than 10,000 people that came to Money20/20 in 2019, the last time the event was held.
“This is a rebuild year,” said Sabina Osorio, marketing director for payments gateway provider Worldnet Payments. “They did a great job pulling this off.”
Johnson, chairman and CEO of Magic Johnson Enterprises, is known for his success with Starbucks. The basketball legend helped open more than 100 Starbucks in underserved neighborhoods. He sold his remaining 50% stake back to Starbucks in 2010, reportedly making $100 million. Magic Johnson Enterprises did not immediately return messages for comment.
Johnson was also part of an investor group that acquired the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2012 for $2 billion. The baseball team is now valued at $4 billion, Johnson said Sunday. Johnson is also an investor in the Los Angeles Sparks, the Los Angeles Football Club, Hudson Group and EquiTrust, the website for Magic Johnson Enterprise’s said.
During the Q&A, Johnson credited his business success to his team. The basketball legend said he likes to hire people who are extremely smart and play sports “because they are so competitive. Their will to win is just as high as mine,” he said. Johnson said he is still competitive even though he doesn’t play sports anymore. The entrepreneur said jokingly that he recently played with his daughter and “let her get to nine and then I crushed her …My wife was so mad. If my mother was up here, I would let her get to nine and then I would crush her, too.”
Write to Luisa Beltran at luisa.beltran@dowjones.com
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