There is a growing angst in the air that we are perhaps no longer in Kansas. By now only the small-minded can deny this.
Gotham, the city of Wall Street, has elected a major who freely speaks the language of Karl Marx, and debates like a 9-year-old. One really wonders how that in any way works for a Gordon Gekko or the Masters of the Universe.
Seizing the means of production. In New York? Are they going to handcuff options traders to radiators and beat them with a chain?
Do you really want to hurt me?
Equally absurd is how our new admirals of corporate capitalism, from Altman to Karp, et al, all seem to be totally unstable, if not completely insane. Here is the CEO of Palantir, entertaining a young female journalist, explaining how apparently there can be only one.
That’s great!
Meanwhile, that same company’s Chairman, fully focussing on his corporate stewardship role, reflects on the imminent arrival of the Antichrist.
Just as well Palantir isn’t a big company embedded into every part of our society, privacy and freedom. Right?
To use the phrase now in vogue to justify all unusual behaviour, we are living in a world fully on the spectrum, where ironically the charlatan man-child Musk is now often considered the grown-up in the room. Yikes.
It seems End of Days, and maybe Peter Thiel is correct.
No wonder Michael Burry (Christian Bale in The Big Short) is again betting against all of these people, especially Palantir. Because they, and their companies, sadly represent a staggeringly large share of the Wall Street markets, and there are no longer any swans that can be considered black.
Risk is objectively off the charts.
Nero meets Caligula.
Today’s politicians of course cannot be relied upon to fix any of this, as they themselves are spectacularly redefining the very definition of altruistic and dignified public service, both sides of the aisle.
Nancy Pelosi ends a 40-year career in Congress, undefeated as the greatest investor of all time, beating Buffett, Cohen, Tudor Jones, Drukenmiller.
Read Here.
No one bats an eye, even when this is as statistically likely as winning two Mega Millions lotteries in a row. Why isn’t she in jail? Why does she have any shred of credibility left?
Of course it’s all relative, and not to be outdone, the President announced his new immigration policy.
I mean… it’s not great, is it?
With this “macro” context, it is now just very difficult on a Sunday to write or talk about business vertical models, or even sport itself. Far less fan engagement widgets, or e-commerce AI personalisation.
Even franchise valuations have no meaningful basis for comment. Pick any number. All of them are talked up as “money good” these days. A real-estate play isn’t per se always value-creating. Ask Callaway and Top Golf.
Not that these things aren’t important, it’s just wtf do they matter in the grand scheme of things? It’s all fiddling whilst Rome burns, with Caligula‘s horse in the Senate.
Where are our true leaders? The people one looks up to, especially in frantic times. Someone to reassure you that all will be fine.
The John Skipper Confessional.
Even an average amateur writer (like me) eventually learns that you only produce decent stuff when you really feel it burning. When you have something you desperately want to say, that chains you to the desk until it’s finished.
In today’s Sunday Column I have something to say.
I want to explain how much, in this crazy world, I have come to admire John Skipper, the celebrity media executive who built ESPN. And not just for his stellar career, his generous contribution to the Sport Summit Como, or his Southern charm. But because he is a good man, with an educated culture and value set. A smart leader whom someone can legitimately view as a point of reference.
He was last week’s guest on The Confessional, and it was for sure “a conversation”. Feedback has demanded this follow-up today.
Skipper has political opinions mostly very different to mine, and that’s the actual point of today’s diary piece. It would be consistent of me in this very polarised dogmatic, non-negotiable world to not be drawn to John. He’s from the other camp. The other tribe.
And yet I am.
Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Where’s Waldo?
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, minister, abolitionist, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and critical thinking, as well as a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society and conformity. Fredrick Nietzsche thought he was “the most gifted of the Americans,” and Walt Whitman called Emerson his “master”. – Wikipedia.
In researching The Confessional, I came across an old interview of Skipper where he was defending Bill Simmons (his most gifted and impactful journalist) from the accusation of being a bit of a loose cannon, overly opinionated, and inconsistent in his commentary. John quoted Waldo’s hobgoblin and dropped the mic.
He is of course right. Consistency and conformity are the sanctuary of the crushingly uninteresting small mind.
The juice is elsewhere.
Cantona could be a good hire for Palantir, one feels.
So the secret of finding balance and answers in this Lewis Carroll world of ours is therefore in non-conformity, inconsistency, and seeking out the intelligent people who ideally think very differently (to you).
The secret is absolutely in finding Waldo.
Citizen Kane.
Each Confessional podcast to date has been different. Gloriously so. The chat wanders, depending solely on the guest, and what they want to communicate. The interviewer’s role as much as possible is to just get out of the way, not challenge too much, and trust in the person across the table.
Even so, how does a supposedly sport business podcast, with a tight format around six fixed questions, veer into heavy debate about politics, culture wars, media bias, DEI, white privilege and the City on The Hill?
The answer lies in the eternal role of narrative-building in our civilisations. He who controls the media (sector) can shape and shift perceptions, and hence democracies. Crowds can be swayed by a great orator and a distribution channel.
For Brutus indeed was an honourable man.
From Citizen Kane to Logan Roy, politics and media have always been a very unholy alliance.
Chilling how familiar Kane sounds, looking at what is going on today.
The media sector and its brand mastheads are also the people who have financed sport for 35 years, so the leap from media to sport to politics is in reality very small and frankly inevitable. Skipper knows this.
One now cannot give any real insight into the future of our industry without explaining money, demographics and geopolitics.
An industry totally adrift.
This is the subheading for the Sport’s Perfect Storm, and many colleagues took real offence.
Spitting in the plate that feeds you.
They are wrong. The definition of “adrift” is not “without value” or “destroyed on the rocks”. It means “without anchor”. And the industry of sport absolutely is without anchor.
The Pay TV business model that has financed our bull market for 35 years is being turned upside down. In Europe especially, our entire industry has existed on the whim of Sky Sport (Comcast) and TNT (WBD). Both are now openly withdrawing from the battlefield. Sky has sold its German subsidiary, and Sky Italia has casually stepped away from owning Serie A. The ambition of the old BT Sport is long gone. DAZN has kept some semblance of competitive tension in the sport rights markets of Spain, Germany and Italy, but they will still be feeling the intense burn of their French débâcle. The hoped for replacement-bid from Big Tech platforms isn’t coming, as they only want global rights for tent-pole big events, and none of them have shown any serious appetite to bid aggressively for bread and butter week-in-week-out sports leagues.
And let’s add in the product itself. We are an industry that has always sold live exclusive rights for full games when now, for a large segment of the customer base, this is the exact opposite of what they really want.
“Adrift” was me being in fact kind.
All roads must lead to the White House.
Trump‘s influence on our industry of sport cannot therefore be overstated. He has the people who finance our industry all off-balance, all dancing to his tune. All needing to pay him a hefty tribute.
This is the cold reality.
It’s most easily seen in developments around the recent rise of Paramount/CBS, in what now seems a frat boy alliance of Dana White, Gerry Cardinale, Joe Rogan, Silverlake, Larry Ellison and maybe even Ari Emanuel. CBS before being acquired by Paramount had been no friend of MAGA, with their storied show 60 Minutes badly offending Trump during the last election, “editing” favourably an interview with his opponent Kamala Harris. He sued.
Donald’s new buddies bought CBS, and let’s say that ill-feeling is now all in the past.
This is how we now roll. The boys of Landman and UFC, high on what many would call toxic masculinity, are back in town.
(There could be no other track than Phil here. Look at him. Those lyrics. Magnificent.)
Paramount and Trump are in the sports game.
The good news is that these lads seem to have money burning a hole in their pocket, and they like sports rights. At least at the top end. We have covered all of this many times, and especially a few Sundays ago.
The Prestige is the only real story in sport now.
But we must, in our second Highlander reference this morning, now conclude that we have entered the Quickening! Paramount also wants Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), but so most likely does Comcast/Sky. As do Amazon and Netflix (studio and steamers assets only). Watching events with interest will be YouTube, Apple and Disney.
The odds for the Mouse are now very long…
Every such major media merger will from today have to pass through an antitrust lens, waiting in reality on the direction of Trump’s thumb. And make no mistake, he will have his favourites. On reflection, how could any serious podcast on sportbiz today not be dominated by opinions on the current incumbent of White House, and of what he is capable.
Because he is leaning heavily on everyone who can dictate the future of the business of sport. Including Saudi Arabia this week.
Hey, it could be worse. Imagine if the United States was imminently hosting the biggest global events that sport has to offer. Imagine the leverage that would give him! So of course the Confessional was dominated by Trump, his morals, and where he is taking America.
Skipper just had the balls and the standing to put all this front and centre. We should be grateful.
The “privilege” to respectfully disagree.
Wisdom and experience dictate that one should never discuss politics or religion in polite company. People tend to fall out. Sometimes irredeemably.
So how do two mature men, seeing things differently on most of those topics, manage to have a civil conversation with a smile on their face? This is the real insight of the show. The lost art of respectful disagreement. The ability to listen, disagree, and still break bread.
That is why I admire John Skipper.
He had a person, me, of lower standing and reputation to him, that wasn’t agreeing with his opinions, and he gracefully welcomed it. That’s not common, especially these days.
This is actually a conversation to celebrate.
– John Skipper
A lesser version of ourselves.
John is right. Dogma, even your own, is such an unpleasant word. It allows for no ventilation or lateral thought, without which you will stagnate and become embittered. It will ultimately drag you down to a lesser version of yourself.
John and I both grew up in places with societal segregation and exclusion: he, as a “white beneficiary” in The South; I, as a Glasgow boy seeing job openings freely proclaiming that “Catholics need not apply”. My reflection is that our only difference in the definition of “privilege” is around timing. The horrors of black discrimination need no further explanation. My father equally suffered real life disadvantage from sectarianism in Glasgow.
But by the time I was an adult, society had evolved, and I can say honestly that I suffered no disadvantage from being of the “wrong” religion in Scotland. Hell, they even let me run the national game.
So, three decades later, I struggle to believe that there is now any meaningful privilege in being a white straight guy. I would instead argue strongly that the opposite now applies, especially in the media and creative industries in America. There is perhaps active discrimination the other way.
I’ve been consistent in this view for many lonely years.
But as we know, that is the hobgoblin of a small mind.
🤷♂️
God bless you, Skipper.
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