In today’s newsletter we discuss Netflix’s $5 billion dollar deal with the WWE, NBC’s Peacock has streaming success with the NFL’s Miami Dolphins and Kansas City Chiefs game, 4 year old social media company BeReal now has 23 million Daily Active Users (DAUs), the Formula 1 racing team AlphaTauri that was owned by the co-founder of Red Bull has been renamed as the “Visa Cash App RB” team, and Jay-Z is doing a collaboration between his Roc Nation and the Italian luxury fashion house Monclear

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Hype Is Building For Usher's Super Bowl Halftime Show

Business

NBC’s Peacock and the NFL had a big game on January 13 when they streamed the playoff game between the Miami Dolphins and Kansas City Chiefs, but not all football fans were happy.

CNN reported that 23 million viewers watched the game, and it took up almost 30% of the internet’s capacity in terms of internet traffic during the game. It’s unclear if streaming live events at this scale is even feasible going forward due to bandwidth constraints.

Then there’s the fact that the majority of football fans weren’t already subscribers of Peacock’s streaming services, so that meant some 2.8 million people had to sign-up to be able to watch the game.

My house is just one of those numbers. We signed up for Peacock to watch the Buffalo Bills and the Los Angeles Chargers game on December 23, then I forgot to cancel the service (which is the goal of every streaming service and SaaS company, and I fell for it).

Then After Dolphins-Chiefs game I swore I was going to cancel Peacock, but then I heard that the movie Oppenheimer would begin streaming on Peacock on February 16, so now I figure I’ll just cancel after that.

All that said, I give myself a 10% chance of successfully canceling before the end of February because I’m sure another must-see event will pop up and delay my cancellation. Then with the Paris Summer Olympics starting in July I’m guessing I’d need to sign up again, but more likely I’ll have forgotten to cancel Peacock so I’ll probably still be a customer.

So yea, Peacock has me right where they want me in their streaming trap.

Peacock’s exclusive NFL playoff game drove ‘biggest subscriber acquisition moment ever measured,’ analytics firm says

Tech

You have to hand it to the small and scrappy social media app BeReal for having the audacity to go up against more successful social media brands like X/Twitter and Instagram, but after being in business for 4 years they recently released that they have 23 million daily active users (DAUs) on their platform.

If you’ve never heard of BeReal, then you probably don’t have a tween or teen in your family.

The quirky social media company focuses on real content and users' photos that are not filtered or curated. When their users snap a pic the app takes a photo from both the front and back-facing cameras to the “real” story about a user’s post.

BeReal is now beginning to onboard brands and celebrities, or at least “Internet Famous” social media users, to their platform.

That in itself is validation enough that a David in the social media industry can go up against and compete with the Goliaths of the Internet industry.

BeReal, which now has 23M DAUs, is onboarding brands and celebs

Entertainment

Netflix just bought the exclusive streaming rights to WWE’s Monday Night “Raw”, and their weekly “Smackdown” in the U.S. and Internationally, as well as WWE’s pay-per-view events like the “Royal Rumble” and “WrestleMania”, for a reported $5 billion dollars over the next 10 years.

This steps up Netflix’s game in the live sports streaming industry to the level as Amazon Prime, who signed a $1.2 billion per-year deal with the NFL to air Thursday night games beginning in 2022,  and Apple who struck a $250 million per-year deal with the Major League Soccer (MLS) as well as an $85 million per-year deal with the Major League Baseball (MLB) to broadcast exclusive games.

In an interview with Variety, Netflix chief content officer Bela Bajaria said “We are excited to have WWE Raw, with its huge and passionate multigenerational fan base, on Netflix.”

He went on to say “By combining our reach, recommendations and fandom with WWE, we’ll be able to deliver more joy and value for their audiences and our members. Raw is the best of sports entertainment, blending great characters and storytelling with live action 52 weeks a year and we’re thrilled to be in this long-term partnership with WWE.”

Netflix’s $5 billion dollar deal is only the latest in the streaming wars. A few years ago in 2021 Amazon Prime signed a deal worth $11 billion dollars, or $1 billion dollars a year, for 11 years for NFL’s Thursday Night Football streaming rights.

In 2023 Warner Bros. Discovery began streaming NBA games to its Max service in a deal worth $24 billion dollars over 9 years.

And one of my favorite sports, Formula 1, has reportedly been in discussions with Apple to stream Formula 1 races for a rumored $2 billion dollars a year.

If I had to look into my crystal ball and guesstimate the future of the live streaming landscape I’d say it’ll continue to change and evolve as media companies smell new opportunities to attract consumer’s attention, and the advertising dollars that go along with them.

Netflix is paying $5 billion to be the home of WWE's Monday Night Raw

Sports

And the award for the worst name in Formula 1 goes to the new “Visa Cash App RB” team.

Once upon a time Red Bull co-founder Dietrich Mateschitz bought a Formula 1 team from Paul Stoddart in 2005 named “Minardi”. Dietrich Mateschitz renamed the team “Scuderia Toro Rosso”, then shortened it to just “Toro Rosso”.

In 2020 Dietrich Mateschitz changed the team’s name from "Toro Rosso" to "AlphaTauri" in order to promote his Red Bull's AlphaTauri fashion brand.

After Dietrich Mateschitz died on October 22, 2022, ownership of the Red Bull and AlphaTauri Formula 1 racing teams went to his only son Mark Mateschitz, but the real day-to-day management of the teams has been in the hands of Christian Horner with advising from Dietrich Mateschitz’s longtime friend Dr. Helmut Marko.

That brings us to the horrible renaming of "AlphaTauri" to the new “Visa Cash App RB” team, with the “RB” standing for Racing Bulls, in homage to their sister team officially named “Oracle Red Bull Racing”.

So is this really the worst name for a Formula 1 racing team in the history of the sport?

Tough call.

It turns out Formula 1 is littered with a lot of incredibly poorly named teams including “Goldie Hexagon Racing”, “Phoenix Finance”, “MasterCard Lola” which failed to even qualify for one race before quitting the sport, “Life Racing Engines” which just lacks any creativity, and “Tec-Mec” which only entered one race in 1959 and had to retire their race car after only 6 laps,  

Maybe the name “Visa Cash App RB” isn’t the worst name Formula 1 after all.

AlphaTauri F1 team makes switch to new Visa Cash App RB identity

Fashion

Jay-Z is doing a collaboration between his Roc Nation and the Italian luxury fashion house Monclear to launch a line of clothing that was all designed by my man himself Jay-Z.

The Roc Nation x Monclear collection includes puffer jackets, vests, heavyweight sweatshirts and sweat shorts with accompanying branded t-shirts, and an iconic fuzzy bucket hat, which would look pretty sweet on me, but I digress.

The collaboration works because of the contrast between the two brand's aesthetics of “alpine luxury fused with a healthy dose of NYC swagger” to quote Esquire.

This isn’t the first time that Jay-Z has worked with Monclear. Jay-Z and one of his Roc Nation producers Mike Dean partnered with Moncler to create an audio/visual project called "The Art of All" for the Italian luxury brand's immersive experience at the February 2023 London Fashion Week.

Jay-Z is far from the first HipHop artist to dip their toes in the fashion industry. Such OGs of the fashion trade include Sean Combs (better known by his alias Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, or just Diddy), has his fashion brand named Sean John which according to Wikipeadia “is a privately held fashion lifestyle company created by music mogul Sean Combs.” that “debut with a men's sportswear collection for the spring 1998 season.” and has “annual retail sales of $450 million” in 2016.

Kanye West’s Brand Yeezy was an incredibly successful and profitable collaboration with Adidas with their Yeezy sneakers. The collaboration Kanye West a Billionaire for a hot minute before his mouth got him in trouble and Adidas canceled their contract after he said some anti-semitic comments and torpedoed his own fashion brand.

Then there was FUBU (better known as For Us By Us), that was one of the first brands spawned from HipHop culture. FUBU reached its peak of popularity back in 1998 when they made $350 million in annual worldwide sales that year.

That brings us to Jay-Z’s own fashion brand Rocawear, which he founded in 199, and eventually sold to the Iconix Brand Group for over $204 million in cash in 2007.

Now Jay-Z is back in the fashion game with his collaboration with Italian luxury fashion house Monclear, although I think we can all agree he never really left.

Moncler's New Roc Nation Collab, Designed by Jay-Z

So much news, so little time. Until tomorrow we’re signing out.

— Chris