👩‍💼 Philadelphia Eagles QB Jalen Hurts Has An All Women Management Team

In today’s newsletter we discuss how the Philadelphia Eagles QB Jalen Hurts has an all women management team, the Wu-Tang Clan is releasing their first new album in 10 years, Zelle processes over $1 trillion dollars in 2024, NFT project Goblintown releases a driving video game, Anduril’s takes over Microsoft’s $22 billion dollars Defense Department HaloLens contract, and ScorePlay raises $13 million for AI-powered media operations.

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WHAT WE’RE READING

Zelle Dominates Peer-to-Peer Transactions In 2024

Peer-to-peer platform Zelle just recorded $1 trillion dollars in volume in 2024, beating all other rivals including PayPal, Venmo, and Cash App.

Zelle’s payments network saw its user base grow by 12% to 151 million accounts in 2024, with total dollars sent on the platform jumping 27% from 2023.

Zelle is owned by Early Warning Services, who is a financial technology company that helps banks and other financial institutions prevent fraud and manage risk. Here’s where it gets interesting. Early Warning Services is actually owned by seven of the country's largest banks, including Bank of America, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, PNC Bank, Truist, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo. This helps to explain how Zelle has taken over so much of the industry, with its integration into the seven biggest banks in the country.

Zelle does have some competitors, so it’s not sleeping on continuing to innovate.

✅ PayPal's total payment volume in 2023 was around $1.53 trillion dollars, but this isn’t considered a strict peer-to-peer platform, but in 2024 PayPal did process $400 billion dollars in P2P transactions.

✅ Venmo's total payment volume in 2023 was estimated to be around $276 billion.

✅ Cash App‘s total annual volume in 2023 was approximately $248 billion.

One thing that is setting Zelle apart from its competition is the measures they’ve implemented to reduce fraud, which has resulted in 99.95% of their transactions being free of fraud and scams. The confidence in the Zelle platform has led to banking customers increasingly using Zelle instead of cash or checks, small businesses adopt the payment option, and renters opting to pay their rent with Zelle instead of with cash or by check.

👓 Business

Microsoft’s loss is Anduril’s gain, to the tune of $22 billion dollars!

In 2021 Microsoft won a 10-year $22 billion dollar contract to provide 120,000 custom HoloLens headsets for the Army, but then in 2024 Microsoft discontinued production of their HoloLens.

In comes Anduril, co-founded by Oculus VR’s co-founder Palmer Luckey, to save the day - maybe. The partnership still needs to win the approval of the Department of Defense, but since there are no other competitors in the field now that Microsoft has abandoned their augmented reality HoloLens, then it’s a pretty good bet that Anduril will win the contract.

🎧 Entertainment

Stop the presses. The Wu-Tang Clan is coming out with a new album for the first time in 10 years!

This is the first album since they came out with a compilation album called The Saga Continues produced by long-time producer Mathematics released on October 13, 2017, but this wasn’t a true Wu-Tang Clan album because of legal drama involving U-God who was suing the group for royalties.

Before that the Wu-Tang Clan released 1 single copy of “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin”, which has been mired in drama thanks to pharma-bro Martin Shkreli who bought the album for $2 million dollars. Martin Shkreli went on to go to jail for fraud, and lost the album in bankruptcy court, only to have a crypto DAO named PleasrDAO purchased it for $4 million to cover Shkreli's debts.

You can’t even make this stuff up!

The new album will be called ‘Black Sampson’, and according to Wu-Tang Clan member Masta Killa it’s some of Mathmatic’s “best work”.

The Wu-Tang Clan And Mathematics ‘Black Samson’ album is due out on April 12, 2025.

⏩ AI

A new AI-powered sports media company, called ScorePlay, has just raised $13 million in a Series A funding round led by 20VC along with a couple of famous investors including Alexis Ohanian's Seven Seven Six, and Giannis Antetokounmpo's BYL Ventures.

ScorePlay's platform helps sports organizations streamline their media operations using AI, by automating the process of tagging, organizing, and distributing content across various platforms.

With this new funding, ScorePlay plans to further expand its platform and solidify its position as a leader in the sports media technology space.

🛞 Crypto

The famous, or perhaps infamous, Ethereum NFT project Goblintown has just come out with their first driving game available on Steam and in the Epic Games store. Sadly, there’s no NFT integration with the game, due in large part to Steam outlawing blockchain-based games on their platform back in 2021.

The name of the game is officially “Goblintown: Really Hard Driving Game”, and you can check out the trailer of the game below.

Trailer:
https://x.com/goblintown/status/1888999654383325686

🏡 Sports

Big props to the Philadelphia Eagles QB Jalen Hurts, who not only won his first Super Bowl, but also has an all-women management team. In an interview before the game, Jalen Hurts said “I was seeking out the best” when he was hiring an agent, Nicole Lynn who landed his five-year, $255 million contract with the Philadelphia Eagles. Then he has Jenna Malphrus who’s his Manager, Shakeemah Simmons-Winter who handles all of his PR, Rachel Everett who’s in charge of Marketing Relations, and Chantal Romain who handles all Media Relations & Client Services.

This all-women team is employed by Klutch Sports Group agency, where Jalen Hurts’ agent Nicole Lynn was promoted to President of the company’s football division in 2023.

When Jalen Hurts was asked how his all-women management team came together he said “It’s something that happened organically. I was seeking out the best, and that’s how it happened,” said Hurts, adding: “And honestly, for me, it’s an eye that I don’t have that I’m able to lean on in certain situations. That’s something I value heavily.”

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irl Media NEWSLETTER is written, edited, and published by Chris Thompson.