The Dan Rayburn Podcast
The Dan Rayburn Podcast
Episode 72: Exploring Apple's Formula One Bid; Candle Media's Poor Revenue Forecast; Taylor Swift’s Media Domination
This week we discuss the rumors that Apple is weighing an annual bid of $2 billion for Formula 1 racing, with the opportunity to purchase global rights after five years. We also detail how Candle Media's earnings are predicted to be between $140 and $170 million, which is less than the $330 million initial expectation. According to reports, Candle Media spent $900 million for Hello Sunshine and $3 billion for Moonbug Entertainment. Finally, we detail how Taylor Swift has already sold more than $100 million worth of advance tickets at AMC Theatres as she continues her worldwide domination across all forms of media.
Podcast produced by Security Halt Media
Welcome to this week's edition of the Dan Rayburn podcast, the show that curates the streaming media industry news that matters most, unvarnished, unscripted and providing you with the factual data you need to know, without any of the hype, the pulse of the streaming media industry.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Dan Rayburn podcast. I am Dan Rayburn, Along with Carlos Mark Donaghan, we are back to talk about Mark. Not too many big things this week, which is good. A few numbers here.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:On some live streaming events, but let's start off with the report that Apple is hiring the rights to Formula One racing.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:Not too surprising, only because, if you know Apple, as we saw from the MLSDL, and what they talked about was, they're looking for rights where they can have a streaming service that is offered globally, earn as many countries as possible without blackout restrictions. So F1 Magazine is reporting that Apple is considering making a bid of about $2 billion a year. Now that would be about some are reporting that's double what Formula One League is currently getting for its global TV rights. It's not quite right. It's about $750 million more. So it is. It's a big number.
Speaker 3:That's significant, though. Yeah, it's not double, but it's big.
Speaker 2:Now a couple of things here. To note, though US rights are currently tied up with ESPN until 2025. So if the deal were to happen, it would have to happen after that, Since that deal expires and global rights aren't available in about five years. So the F1's current media deals expire just before 2029. So what F1 Magazine is saying is that Apple could potentially sign a deal, get some rights that would start after ESPN's expire, so they would sounds like they would start a service in 2026. Every year after that they would get everywhere else the rights expired by 2029. And then this rumor they would do a seven to 10 year deal, so something similar into the range of what they do with MLS. I think MLS was how long was MLS? Seven years.
Speaker 3:Seven.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I said I don't know Friday night baseball, I think was 10. I think MLS was seven. So seven to 10 years, which is what we've seen them do. So that would be interesting. What I was thinking too about, formula One in particular.
Speaker 3:It's 10 years down for MLS 10 years okay.
Speaker 2:When Apple did that, deal with them. They also tie in a bunch of other Apple technology for the fan experience In terms of how they do, the way they upgraded their map if you're in the stadium for any of those games. Yes, the way they highlight restaurants on the map. You know Apple Maps nearby. There's other Apple services and tech that they tied into that, and I'm thinking with Formula One. There's so much they could do there. It's an event where you've not been to a Formula One race. There are a lot of people and it covers a huge amount of footprint and there's lots of vendors and there's food and there's all kinds of things. The other thing that many people may not know is the number one. The last time I saw the map, the number one sport in the world that buys merchandise, from a fan standpoint, is car racing.
Speaker 3:It's Formula One, yeah, and then NASCAR and you know all the oh yeah.
Speaker 2:They spend a lot of money.
Speaker 3:They do.
Speaker 2:So is there also a tie in potentially there for Apple in another way? I don't know, but I definitely see Formula One as the type of content that's best suited for Apple. It's got a global fan base. You have different types of fans as well.
Speaker 3:It's very diverse.
Speaker 2:Right, just like MLS.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, that's certainly my perception, but I travel enough across Europe and it's just astounding. There is no sort of prototype of like. This is what a Formula One fan looks like, either age or whatever.
Speaker 2:It's an interesting demographic. It's also one that has money if you look up some of the people there just what it costs to get a ticket alone to the event. So I like the idea If this is true. Obviously, this is just being reported right now. No one is reported that Apple's actually made a bid yet. It's something that apparently they're looking at in detail. So we'll keep an eye on that one, but I thought that's pretty interesting.
Speaker 3:Interesting.
Speaker 2:Now let's go into another piece of content news. So we're recording this. On Friday, october 6th, bloomberg is reporting that earnings at Candle Media, which Blackstone gave former Walt Disney executives Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs more than a billion dollars to create Candle Media and then they went out and acquired a lot of other companies. So Bloomberg is reporting that Candle Media is expected to come in at 50% below companies they acquired at Forecast for 2023. So many probably the biggest one they're going to know is actor Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine. They acquired that. They also acquired a company called Moonbug Entertainment which produces a lot of YouTube Kids Entertainment.
Speaker 2:So Bloomberg is reporting that Candle's profit this year is expected to come in at around 140 to 170 million. Now that's profit. Keep in mind that's below an earlier estimate. They're saying 330 million. Now, if we look at some of these numbers, candle has more than one billion in debt. So that's the first thing to note. Second, their acquisitions. They did. Moonbug is reportedly expected to generate about 150 million in profit this year. It was bought in 2021. When it was bought, it was reported that the number was $3 billion. Three billion Now. Hello Sunshine was reported by everybody. We don't know for sure, but the numbers leaked out pretty quick and it was the same number everybody was using the media, which was north of 900 million. Now, hello Sunshine's management projected at the time Bloomberg is saying that the company would make more than 80 million in profit in 2023. So, 80 million in profit you paid over 900 million. $150 million in profit from Moonbug you paid $3 billion.
Speaker 2:Crazy what are these companies thinking?
Speaker 3:And Hello, sunshine is just going to deliver 10% of projected earnings, so they're off by 90. They missed it by 90%.
Speaker 2:Now interesting. Kevin Mayer did talk about this at some sort of conference media event. The article didn't say where it was, but they quoted him directly recently saying okay, it wasn't a great year for us, but that's because a couple things happened. We had sort of the perfect storm of the writer strike. You had less subscribers signing up for services. He basically talked to economic conditions in the market, also harder to get funding. But I get the writer strike piece.
Speaker 2:But the whole idea that, hey, we didn't do as well because the number of new subscribers to services didn't grow the way we thought. Well, guys, netflix warned us during COVID. When Netflix blew past its estimates during COVID, it came out and told Wall Street this is not the new norm, we don't expect to keep a lot of these. This is a COVID bump. So this idea that, oh wow, like we didn't realize streaming yet net new subs, it was going to slow down. Well, you should have. We have the data. There's every indication of the market from every one of these services, what they're seeing. Yeah, the other thing I think interesting mark is I don't know Kevin Mayer personally at all, never talked to him.
Speaker 3:I was going to ask if you'd ever met him.
Speaker 2:No, no, seen him speak at events and whatnot, but don't know him at all. The people I always dealt with at Disney was in the DSS Disney Streaming Services group but different folks.
Speaker 2:But it's interesting when the media writes specifically about Kevin. It's almost as if all this genius from Disney left and started this whole candle media thing and it's like, well, okay, he gets a credit for sure for helping launch Disney Plus, but left at a time when it was blowing through billions of dollars. It never made a profit. It still hasn't raised a whole bunch of money and I don't care what the argument is definitely overpaid because even if the profit on some of these, like Moonbug, even if it was five times what they have now, you're still not even at a billion dollars and you paid $3 billion for it. So these deals were done at the height. These acquisitions were done at the height of what was going on in the market with streaming. Look, great for Moonbug, great for Reese Witherspoon, right for being able to get the deals that they did. But also, listeners should realize the way these deals are struck. They're not getting $900 million.
Speaker 3:Exactly, yeah, reese, this isn't cash that they're getting.
Speaker 2:I'm sure there's a cash component, but they're getting stock in a new company that is not going to be worth what it's worth. So somebody, in addition to the Bloomberg article, was writing about the payouts and having to hit certain numbers, to hit certain thresholds, which now they're not going to get, which means it's going to be less money. So, what is the final value that they paid for these companies? It's a little unknown, no doubt, but the point is they still overpaid.
Speaker 3:Well, I saw an interesting variety article that actually came out almost exactly one month ago I mean one year ago. It was let's see what's the date on the September 27th, 22, so little over a year ago, and I think it's based on. It looks like a presentation Kevin gave and maybe some interviews. It's not super clear, but there's some interesting detail here. One thing that jumped out is he was asked about TikTok because you'll remember he was the CEO of TikTok for, like, I think all of like what three months or something, or four months Short period of time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, very, very, very, very short and, in all fairness again, I also certainly don't know him, never met him he got into a real firestorm because that was right, he joined and like, right at that moment, the Trump White House and just the government in general just totally put TikTok in the crosshairs. So anyway, that's not my point, but he said something really interesting. He said in this article anyway, Mayor says the company is in the business of buying firms with well-defined audiences, and you know, it's just sort of interesting. I guess what sticks out to me is, you know, okay, clearly these production companies had have audiences. You know, I mean Reese Witherspoon, she's obviously and, by the way, I don't this isn't her content, right, this is like, is it kids content or what is it?
Speaker 2:even Moonbug is kids content.
Speaker 3:Okay, that's right. From what I understand, it's a whole bunch of stuff, YouTube and whatnot. But it's not. My point is it's not like they acquired the Reese Witherspoon back catalog, you know, for 900 million.
Speaker 1:Correct right.
Speaker 3:You know she owns a production company. You know she's a producer, yeah, so. So anyway, it's interesting. You know that I guess his counter to why he was paying so much because the article phrases this you know, in the context of valuation haters is what they put in quotes oh, interesting, so, yeah. So, basically pointing out like you paid how much and why does that make sense?
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it's. You know it's been interesting to see, obviously for anyone following the space the last 18 months. Just on the content side, forget tech and everything else, but just how companies are revaluing is the word I'm going to use content.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, what is?
Speaker 2:most important to their catalog. We see companies removing content. We see Roku recently saying, well, we're going to, we're going to revisit our content catalog and talking about how they can save money there. We've already seen Max do it, so, yeah, this is an interesting one to watch because you know the company is more than a billion dollars in debt. Generating profit is great, but when you're generating profit, as it's being reported, of $80 million, you know from Hello Sunshine, that's going to take a long time for you to take off your debt, service that debt.
Speaker 2:So just this is this is an interesting one. And then the final piece I'll put to this is a lot of people in the industry, especially those tied close to some of the companies we're talking to, especially Disney, have speculated privately and publicly that well, the next step here for Bob at Disney is he'll just acquire Candle Media and then he'll have Kevin succeed him as the CEO, because he already knows them, because Candle would give them more content and whatnot. But at this point, considering what Candle has in terms of debt and what they paid for these companies, I don't think Disney could pull that off from a financial standpoint. Could they do it? Sure, with stock and some cash? Absolutely. But would Wall Street like that? No, because right now Wall Street is saying well, are you going to, you know, divest ABC and ESPN? So they have too much going on to do an acquisition like that. Also, I expect, mark, pretty much any day we're going to hear something on the Hulu deal with Comcast. Remember, they bumped that up, they moved that up to the end of September.
Speaker 2:Here we are going the first week in October, so I wouldn't be surprised if we hear something on that pretty soon. So I think, with some of these numbers coming out, it may be throw some cold water and some people who are like, nope, they'll just acquire Candle, kevin is the new CEO and away you go. This is going to be interesting to watch Disney is it's incredible, the different moving pieces taking place inside Disney right now? Yes, yes, I would agree, and 90% of them I can't even talk to right with the conversations that I'm having, but it's just. It's fascinating to hear what is taking place. So we'll keep an eye on that. One, mark, do you like to pay higher prices for streaming services?
Speaker 3:Oh, I love it.
Speaker 2:Great, I'm going to love direct TV stream effective next month in November 5th.
Speaker 1:How much more can I pay? Well?
Speaker 2:you can pay two to $10 a month, depending on what you're doing.
Speaker 3:Two to 10, what a bargain Two to 10.
Speaker 2:They're saying the average is five. So they announced that not only raising prices of direct TV stream, but they're raising prices of satellite TV. So some subscribers are going to see an increase of $3, some 10, five, some 10, so the average is about five. But on top of that, some subscribers are also going to see an increase in regional sports fees. The sports fees range from $4 a month to $16 a month, depending on your zip code. So it sounds like they're going to be going out by an average of about $2, but more price raises. Now, of course, this isn't going to shock anybody. Direct TV came out and said they have to raise pricing because of the rising cost of programming acquisition.
Speaker 2:So I don't know where we're at and nobody knows the answer to this mark of at what point they're going to do these streaming services and pay TV services price themselves out of the market. At some point it's going to come. It's just going to be enough for consumers. I think streaming still has wiggle room here, but it's going to come. Now, tying on to this, at&t said that they're exploring options to sell off Direct TV completely. So for those that don't know, at&t owns 70% of Direct TV and a private equity firm called TPG owns the rest. But this doesn't really surprise me because we all know with declining pay TV customer base, it's cutting into AT&T's cash flow, so they might just sell Direct TV altogether.
Speaker 3:Interesting.
Speaker 2:What I'm wondering is who on earth would want to buy that?
Speaker 3:Who would buy it? I don't know, potentially TPG takes out the rest. I was just going to say, believe it or not, and I think listeners and you spent a lot of time talking to private equity.
Speaker 1:So you've got a view on this.
Speaker 3:This is a business that some they have to have a taste for the complexities of it, but I think there would be some private equity interest.
Speaker 2:I think there would too, but it would be at the price point that. At&t would want.
Speaker 3:Well, but then again, maybe AT&T just wants to shed it and go back to you know. I mean, hey, it may be one of those acquisitions or it's like, wow, that was a bargain.
Speaker 2:It might be, and we all know that acquiring Direct TV I think many in the industry would agree was the worst deal we've ever seen in this industry, maybe ever. The amount of debt that it's saddled AT&T with and you're buying a legacy satellite TV platform. It just made no sense to AT&T, so, to your point, maybe they're just, hey, we've had enough, we lost the money. Like we're just going to write this off, let's get out from under it. It's possible, but the one to keep an eye on.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah it is.
Speaker 3:But you know, I was having a conversation, dan, with someone earlier this week and you know it was around just the context of the pay TV market and you know, certainly there was no shortage of LinkedIn posts, which are largely true, you know that paint a picture of the sky is falling, you know, and the ground is cratering and you know you better run for shelter. All those things are true, you know. Look, cord cutting, et cetera, all the pressures. But the conversation we're having was interesting is, at the same time, there's still tens and tens of millions of people across cable and across satellite who are paying and oh, by the way, you know there is no sign that. Like, oh, in six quarters, you know that's going to shrink by 70%, like, yes, we are continuing a down, you know trajectory, so you know it's not like anybody's diluted there. But the point is is that and this is where you know, just theorizing, like sometimes private equity, likes these businesses that are, that are challenged, that require a whole new way of thinking and operating the business et cetera.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you know we think of them as oh, they just come in, they chop it up and sell it for parts. Well, that's the old private equity model, you know the new model is, you know they could come in and with a whole new, you know capitalization base and fresh eyes. And now, granted, you know those who have been in the business for 40 years will not like it, because you know they're not going to want to do it the way that it's always been done, which is partially why we ended up where we are right.
Speaker 2:But I don't know.
Speaker 3:It's interesting to watch. There's pressures on all fronts, you know, as we talk a lot about on the streaming, so you know there's a lot of pressure on the side, but you know there's pressure.
Speaker 2:To your point. When Pee looks at deals like this, what they want to do is they want to come in and they want to cut costs. They want to restructure the business, they want to refocus it. They want to provide a different analysis of how can they increase margins. But the other thing they want to see is can we actually make margins on the product once we take it over, and even if it's losing money? Now to your point. Many of them are okay with that because they think they can turn it around. But on paper, if you run the numbers and there's no way to turn this business around because of content licensing costs and infrastructure costs, then it's extremely hard for AT&T to get rid of it.
Speaker 3:But there's an interesting wrinkle in this and that is the implosion of the RSNs, these regional sports networks. And so what, if you know what? If, basically, direct TV and a lot of paid TV services kind of get back to the skinny bundle, you know, and they're just like, oh guess what? You know, we're not going to re-up with these RSNs, it's too expensive, it doesn't make sense, you know. And for those sports fans that want it, they can go direct, you know, or maybe you know they strike a deal to carry at some, you know, exorbitant cost, right. But this notion that I and I am a person that I mean, don't get me wrong. I enjoy, you know, the occasional baseball game, football game, basketball game, but I am far from a sports fan. So for me, you know, I'm like, why am I subsidizing your? You know, you know you're, you know the content that you want to watch, I don't, I could care less if it's on my, you know but we heard.
Speaker 2:We heard spectrum talk about this charter.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we heard them saying we want to go back to skinny bundles.
Speaker 2:I remember years ago we had that where you could cut out some sports. But it's going to come to. What we've been talking about for years in this industry, and more so lately, is the re-bundling and repackaging of content, whether it's pay TV or streaming. It's, it's coming and tying into that.
Speaker 3:Let's see what happens.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's going to be interesting, I think, the news from Paramount Global that they're considering scrapping their plans to even launch Paramount plus in India this year in favor of doing a deal with existing partners who are already there you know ties into what we're talking about of what is the best way to put your content out there. It may not be going to direct a consumer. It may not Sure.
Speaker 2:And in India in particular, it's an interesting territory. We did see Disney, of course, not win the rights to IPL digitally, they won it for TV. But even even they were vocal like, hey, this is just not a good deal for our shareholders. So, maybe Paramount's realizing too hey, this old model I say old, but three years ago expand everywhere in your national and get big fast with your DTC service. Maybe in some regions that's not the best go to market strategy.
Speaker 3:Not the best yeah.
Speaker 2:So not surprising we're seeing some of these streamers in particular regions of the world that they're thinking of going into potentially changing strategy. It's about how can they get the most money for their content over time, whether they have to go direct to consumer or not, that's no longer the only option, so that's another one to watch. Discovery plus has raised pricing as well, only for the without ads product or option. They like to say that this is a. This is the first time they've increased a monthly subscription price since they launched in the market in January 2021, but it's only discovery plus ad free, so it's going to go up $2 from $699 to $899. So the tier with ads will not change it's still 499 a month.
Speaker 2:Speaking of raising pricing, so this is a funny one. I think it was. Wall Street Journal was like exclusive Netflix might raise pricing. After the writer straight Okay, okay, listen, wall Street Journal. It's not an exclusive, because Netflix already publicly talked about on their earnings call, like two or three quarters ago, that they believed in 2024 they could raise pricing again. They already talked about this.
Speaker 3:So you need to tweet that episode or X that episode back to Wall Street Journal. I remember us referencing that and both marveling, and you know I don't think we're really debated. We both kind of agreed like yeah, you know Netflix right now. Just they've got the power, you know they do.
Speaker 2:And also Netflix might raise pricing. Okay, but what if they only raise it on one of the tiers?
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so even in select regions.
Speaker 3:You know select regions right. You just don't know.
Speaker 2:So it's just, it's interesting. You know there was another article written. I'm not going to call the person out by name, no need, but it was interesting how they were saying okay, we're a year into Netflix, netflix is AVOD model. It's a complete disaster. Nobody's watching it, they don't know what the hell they're doing and it's like all right, listen, they're a year in. And then they're comparing it to the success that Hulu's having yeah, and how long Hulu's been in the AVOD market yeah, so comparing Netflix is no good. Also saying no one's watching it. Well, actually there are, because Netflix gave out stats telling us how many subscribers they had two quarters ago.
Speaker 2:And this idea that anyone in the industry who understands anything about streaming from a technical standpoint thinks that they're going to have a from brand new day one to a year later, a complete ad service out in the market that all of a sudden is now taking up the largest percentage of your viewership you don't understand how the business works, let alone the technical stack. So we're seeing a lot of people now it's been a year talked down on Netflix is oh, it's terrible, it's not working. And part of that reasoning is they did just Netflix did announce they're changing who's running their ad business. So right away the media speculated well, this person was fired because they're doing a bad job. I haven't seen anyone confirm that Netflix came out in the press release and thanked them by name. That doesn't mean they didn't fire them. But the point is, just because you're replacing one person, even someone who's leading that strategy or that product, it doesn't mean that it's been a failure to date. So that's jumping to conclusions.
Speaker 2:I also thought it's interesting another saying well, netflix is still struggling to figure out their CPM pricing. They're not struggling. You've got a brand new service. You're going to trial different types of CPMs based on viewership over time. It's the exact same thing every other streaming service has done when they start off with an AVOD model. So the haters around Netflix's AVOD service and it's dumb and it doesn't work and they don't know what they're doing. Numbers matter. I also found an interesting mark in every one of those articles I've read in the last few days. None of them, a single one of them, produced any numbers of any kind, even though Netflix has put out numbers publicly. So if you're reading some of this stuff, listeners, please just question it. Someone's writing an article and these articles were long and it's like, okay, you didn't put out a single number Netflix has given out publicly tied to their ad business.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:Right, come on. That's a problem. Let's jump into YouTube TV real quick. They just dropped what I find. I believe someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks to be the lowest three month discount ever on YouTube TV, at $52.99 a month. Previously, I saw discounts above 60.
Speaker 1:This just came out now.
Speaker 2:The offer. Obviously, it's only available to customers who are not current YouTube TV base subs and you can't have trialed the service previously.
Speaker 3:Time to open a new Gmail account.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's probably what it is.
Speaker 2:I would assume that's all it takes, unless you're paying the same credit card, same PayPal, but $53 a month for each month for the first three months lowest pricing. It's also interesting they're doing this at a time when obviously they're ramping up viewership for NFL Sunday ticket. We mentioned last week NFL Sunday ticket. That's now free every Sunday between one and two 30 if you want to trial it. We see a lot of trial offers out there with YouTube TV, a lot of partnerships.
Speaker 2:I am hoping hoping that we're going to get some numbers from Google on the next earnings call. I don't think we will, but I'm hoping that we do. I'm also wondering if we're going to get some new numbers from Netflix, specifically on the AVOD side of the business, because their earnings are in the 18th of this month. That's only 12 days away from when we're recording this. When listeners are listening to this, it just probably drops in two to three days. We're going to be seven to eight days out from Netflix's earnings. So one to keep an eye on.
Speaker 2:Quick little stat mark from NBC Sports the Sunday night football game against the chiefs and the jets had an average minute audience of 1.85 million viewers. This was across Peacock, nbc Sports digital platforms and all the NFL's digital platforms. The 1.85 million a little higher than some of the other games. Another reason I bring that up is NBC Sports says that's the largest streaming audience ever for regular season Sunday night NFL games, specifically for NBC Sports, so under 2 million. So I highlight this because those in our industry need to understand these numbers, because people do run around and write things and sports has such a huge streaming audience online and it's going to take over TV viewership and it's like guys keep it in perspective. Some are larger than others, but here's NBC Sports saying it's the largest ever for them and it's at 1.85 million. Then finally, mark, I never thought I would mention Taylor Swift so often on our podcast.
Speaker 3:You seem to be obsessed with her.
Speaker 2:You're mixing her a little too much Dan. My cousins are definitely obsessed with her.
Speaker 1:I can tell you that there you go.
Speaker 2:Yes, and they love when I post about her, even though they don't understand what I'm posting about, but they just love them and show them Taylor.
Speaker 3:Swift.
Speaker 1:They like it.
Speaker 2:Of course they love it. They wish her tickets were a lot cheaper, but it just came out that her tour has sold more than $100 million worth of advanced tickets globally for AMC theaters, where they're showing an on-demand recap of her tour Right now. The film is projected to gross $240 million domestically.
Speaker 1:Well, it's already been out. So in a four-week run they're saying it's projected to do $240 million.
Speaker 2:That's just in North America. Wow. Now if it hits that, it's in the top 10 best-performing movies of the year, according to the box office folks who keep those numbers. That's just in the US.
Speaker 3:She is just a money printing machine. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 2:The tour is $1.5 billion is what people who cover the tour space and the music space keep reporting. Is what the tour is going to grow. Throw this in there. I don't know what it does or doesn't include, but you're talking approaching $2 billion. Now that is just incredible and, to think about, it's really one person. It's not a TV show or a series where there's tons of actors. Right, there's all these different. Now obviously Laka goes into her music and stage and dancers and whatnot, but if you think about it, it's one person creating that content.
Speaker 2:That is approaching $2 billion just for one tour. That is incredible.
Speaker 3:Well, I've seen At least once you posted, maybe even a couple of times, and I think you've asked the question Anybody know why she hasn't streamed her concerts?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was interesting the answers I got. Yeah, and it was so odd.
Speaker 3:I don't remember the answers and of course I would put very little faith, probably in most of them.
Speaker 2:Well, the answers were like she doesn't want to take away from in-ticket sales, in-person sales.
Speaker 1:No guys, she's selling out in minutes in every single city, exactly Just because it goes online, that's not taken away from ticket sales. That's not the way it works.
Speaker 2:So I always thought a lot of people were saying, well, she's focusing on the in-person experience, okay, nothing wrong with that, but you cut a deal to put it in movie tiers.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, that's not in-person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now you could also be running the numbers and saying well, cutting a deal with AMC theaters. Yeah, maybe she's getting 50% of ticket sales and there's $125 million.
Speaker 3:Exactly and I didn't follow close enough. So maybe this was known about the AMC deal, but at the time you asked the question I didn't know that it was going to theaters. So now it's sort of I could conjure up a view that says, well, maybe AMC said we're going to give you this deal and whatever their split is, but you can't stream it.
Speaker 1:Well, that's possible.
Speaker 3:There's something around the rights and who knows? Maybe it's coming, it's just it's windowed. So it's going to come to the streaming service.
Speaker 2:There was an interesting article that gave the background of how the deal came through with AMC and what they said was Taylor Swift's team was pitching this concert content to a whole bunch of media outlets Hollywood outlets who basically were too slow to move and came back and said, well, we could probably get this out in 2025. So that's also why I thought, well, if you do streaming, you could get this out very quickly.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then the way it ended up working was Taylor Swift's dad ended up getting introduced to the executive at AMC I forget it was CEO or president and they said they could get out very quickly and they had the distribution. So that was one of the reasons, too, Mark, why I thought like okay, well, Hollywood's taken too long, Go to direct consumer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:Now, if you're getting paid a lot from AMC and it's guaranteed, I wouldn't try and webcast it either. What's the point? So interesting just to see the numbers from her and at one point Call it with this at 240, 250, or 1.75 billion for a tour. So just incredible. When we're seeing all these other challenges in the market around content, here's one person who continues to just. There's one person, single artist.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and to your point, sure, her production costs are multiple millions. So she's one person, but she's got the band, she's got the dancers, she's got the staging. So there is a lot. There is some probably surprisingly high costs that go into the production.
Speaker 2:But there's hundreds of millions of dollars.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's hundreds of millions, but when you're approaching 2 billion, you can afford hundreds of millions.
Speaker 2:Well, there was a story put out recently that she gave $100,000 bonus to all the drivers who drive all this gear around from city to city to city and it's pretty common article was saying that they get a bonus for a tour like this, the end of the tour of about $10,000. But supposedly she did a handwritten letter to each one of them with $100,000 as a bonus.
Speaker 2:So if that's true and you could tell the story, it didn't look made up. They had all the details and they talked about the date it was done and her father is the one who visited the truck drivers and you're also taking care of your own people.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, this comes back to you know you invest in people, not ideas. So people who understand that are successful people in life.
Speaker 3:Isn't that interesting whether? They're a company, whether they're an actor, musician, you know.
Speaker 1:You hear?
Speaker 3:sometimes the same stories about actors. You know that, just the salt of the earth. You're nice people. And then, of course, you hear the other stories too.
Speaker 2:You take it even outside of business personal lives. You invest in the right people, you see a benefit. That is just the way it works In business. We tend to see a lot of companies struggle with that, but it doesn't mean I'm going to be going to a Taylor Swift show.
Speaker 3:Still for anyone who might be asking I feel better, dan, I feel better now, sorry.
Speaker 2:Even if my cousin's invited me, I am not making bracelets and like hanging out at a Taylor Swift show, it's not going to happen. The funny story though, I did run into her physically and almost knocked her over. Yep, a couple of years ago at Bowery Bar in New York City there was a big plant, sort of. As you walk in, I walked around the corner you can't sort of see it and literally knocked into her, apologized, kept walking, and one of my friends was like, do you know what that is? And I was like listen, it's fine, just keep walking.
Speaker 1:I'm supposed to hang out with friends.
Speaker 2:Don't bother her. So I guess technically I have met her, but I will not be going to her concert.
Speaker 3:So okay, so I have an interesting running into a celebrity story and it was at streaming media, east of all things.
Speaker 2:How long ago.
Speaker 3:Um, eight years ago, nine years ago, because the person that I because he was there Condi, condi, condi Lisa Rice. I come off the elevator, I brushed shoulders and and I didn't even know who it was until I brushed, so and you know, there's a whole entourage and you know typical elevator and I, you know, and I'm just sort of minding my own business honestly had no clue. And the person with me goes that's Condi Lisa Rice. You bumped into Condi Lisa Rice. I'm like, oh wow.
Speaker 2:I turned around and I saw her. Yeah.
Speaker 3:But no, but it was just like when I turned around and I you know, it was very clear, like oh, yeah, wow, that is, you know.
Speaker 2:But and you didn't get beat up for that, so that's good.
Speaker 3:No, I didn't get beat up. No, it's not like I physically like you know, but it's kind of one of those, you know, you know, like getting in a crowded elevator at the Hilton on a you know right, it was the Hilton, of course. Yeah, it was the Hilton yeah. New York City and you know, not surprising, so anyway. So that's all we've got.
Speaker 2:Mark, we're done with our Taylor Swift stories. What do we have next week? Next week is the week before earnings start to come out. So Netflix on the 18th. We've got Meta in the 25th. Comcast on the 26th, paramount is what are they? November 2nd. So we're going to start getting earnings seasons pretty soon, but I think pretty soon we're going to be able to talk about the Comcast, hulu, disney deal and that's. That's going to be a big deal just across the industry, just for a lot of reasons. So we'll break that down once that news is out.
Speaker 2:In the meantime, check out LinkedIn. I did put up the story, the Bloomberg story that we talked about earlier. It's a great story too, about candle media, because the Bloomberg author included just tons and tons and tons and tons of actual revenue numbers, breaking it down from previous years, what was raised, which is awesome because so many times articles don't do that. So that's on LinkedIn. You can check that out. Everything we talked about today is up on LinkedIn. If you have any questions, anytime, reach out to Mark and I. We will take a one week break during my stream media show in New York City coming up. That's in two weeks. A reminder if anybody wants a discount pass to 10,. Reach out to me and give you a discount code for sure. But in the meantime you have any questions, reach out to Mark and I. We appreciate you listening and we will talk to you all next week.
Speaker 1:If you enjoyed the show, send it to a friend, have questions for Dan or Mark, connect with them on LinkedIn at any time, and be sure to check out Dan's blog at StreammediaBlogcom.