In today’s issue we discuss President Joe Biden trolling Trump supporters on Truth Social, MTV Europe cancels Music Awards, Netflix leans into sports, SpaceX/Blue Origin/Virgin Galactic tell lawmakers to back off and give us some space, Travis Kelce buys a new crib, and the NBA is changing the balance of power in the media.

Business

Netflix is leaning into live sports by combining athletes from Formula 1 and the PGA Tour into an event they are calling “The Netflix Cup”, which will air as a live sports event on Netflix. So instead of buying the rights to a sports league they are just creating their own event. I love it!

Formula 1 and Golf are hot right now (but with all things cyclical they may not be for long), so it makes sense to capitalize on this live event mashup.

According to the article “Netflix announced it would broadcast “The Netflix Cup” live, a matchup between athletes that appeared in the Formula 1 docuseries and the golf series “Full Swing.” The athletes will compete in a match play tournament in Las Vegas to kick off the week of the Formula 1 Heineken Silver Las Vegas Grand Prix.”

This is indicative of a larger trend in the media industry to showcase live sports events, which tend to have higher viewership, because no one wants to watch a sports event where they already know the winner (trust me, as a NY Giants fan if I get a notification that they lost I’m not rushing home to watch it on demand now that I know the score).

Fans put a huge emphasis on watching sports live, demonstrated by “when the return of the National Football League and college football seasons propelled both broadcast and cable-TV viewership. Broadcast sports viewership was up 360%, compared to 222% during the same period last year, while cable TV got a nearly 25% increase in sports watchers, according to data from Nielsen.”

Sports programming still dominates TV, and Netflix is leaning more into it

Tech

This Monday President Joe Biden’s campaign joined Donal Trump’s Truth Social, in what should be called a master class in trolling. The Biden Campaign’s 1st post on Truth Social was “Well. Let’s see how this goes. Converts welcome!” From there for some inexplicable reason Truth Social has been promoting President Joe Biden’s campaign account. As it stands right now, President Joe Biden’s campaign had more followers than Donald Trump’s own campaign (awkward).

“The Biden account’s profile picture on Truth Social is a depiction of “Dark Brandon,” a meme generated by the president’s supporters in response to Trump backers turning “Let’s Go Brandon,””

This comes as Truth Social has been trying for over a year to merge with Donald Trump’s SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) called Trump Media & Technology Group. The SPAC recently announced “that it will return the remaining $533 million of the $1 billion raised to finance the venture after investors canceled $467 million of commitments.” It is unclear how much runway Truth Social still has in the bank, or for how long it can continue operations with a white night acquirer. While it is a private company, and doesn’t release its financials, the word on the street has been that Truth Social is not profitable and that it has had a hard time finding advertisers, except of course Mike Lindell's My Pillow company (which itself is having a hard time as consumers have been turned off by his embrace of the Big Lie.)

Trump’s Truth Social is promoting the Biden campaign’s new account

Space

What do you get when three of the leading human spaceflight companies in the U.S. complain to lawmakers that agencies like the FAA and the Fish & Wildlife agencies are dragging their feet and causing long delays in rocket launches? The answer is a whole lot of nothing.

SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic “told Congress this week that the industry needs time to mature before federal regulators introduce new safety guidelines for human spaceflight — but that existing regulatory processes for launch are in dire need of improvement.”

I’ve said it before that the FAA needs to speed up its review of SpaceX’s previous failed Starship launch in order for the company to launch its next improved version. Obviously SpaceX doesn’t set out to fail, but they do learn from their mistakes faster than any other company in the space launch industry.

Congress needs to reign in the FAA, and convince them to speed things up before these companies decide to pack up and move operations to a more friendly country who will allow them to iterate and innovate faster.

Three leading space companies agree: No new regulations on human spaceflight

Entertainment

Full disclosure: I haven’t watched MTV or any of their worldwide VMA in probably 20 years, but I was sad to hear that MTV canceled their 2023 MTV Europe Music Awards Citing Israel-Gaza Crisis.

If there’s anything the world needs right now it’s music, and its ability to bring us together. What does canceling the event achieve? If anything this is a missed opportunity to add on a fundraising component to the awards show to raise money for humanitarian supplies to both Israel and the Palestinian territories.

I get that the awards show wanted to demonstrate sensitivity to the “volatility of world events” as they said, but this is the 1st time since the MTV EMAs have been held since 1994 that the awards show has been canceled. Clearly there have been numerous other tragedies since then including 9/11, the Afghanistan war, the second Iraq war, Russia invading Ukraine in 2014 and again in 2022, but MTV didn’t cancel the awards show for those events so why cancel it now?

I just feel like this is a reactionary decision, and didn’t take into consideration all the good that could have come from harnessing the worldwide viewership that an awards show like this could have achieved.

Paramount Cancels 2023 MTV Europe Music Awards Citing Israel-Gaza Crisis

Real Estate

Travis Kelce, of Taylor Swift fame….oh and being a 2-time NFL Superbowl champion Tight End for the Kansa City Chiefs, just picked up a $6 Million dollar mansion. He already owned a sweet crib in Kansas City, but apparently with all the prying eyes lately it wasn’t private enough. His new pad sports "a pool with a waterfall attached," along with"a tennis and pickleball court," and "a mini golf course." No news on if the new house has a closet for Taylor Swift's clothes and a spot for her to leave a toothbrush.

This new crib is a drop in the bucket when you consider he signed a $57,250,000 contract with the Kansas City Chiefs in 2023, that includes a $22,750,000 guaranteed, and an average annual salary of $14,312,500. For 2023 he’ll earn a base salary of $11,250,000 and a workout bonus of $250,000. Yea, he can afford to splurge on some real estate I’d say!

Report: Chiefs’ Travis Kelce Buys $6M Private Mansion Amid Taylor Swift Romance Speculation

Sports

The NBA is the most popular sports league out of the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB in terms of both domestic and international viewership. So it makes sense that with the NBA’s next media rights deal they will command a pretty hefty fee. But who stands to snag that deal? As more leagues have been turning to streaming services to broadcast their games, could we see a future where Netflix brings you NBA games, or Disney+ partners with sister company ESPN to bring you game highlights and player interviews? Or will the stodgy old media continue to hold the rights?

One thing is for sure - the next contract will transform the entire media industry.

NBA can shift the balance of power in media with its next rights deal

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

— Chris