Weekly Roundup – July 15th, 2025
Roundup Links
Apple closes in on 'US$150m-a-year' F1 US rights deal
"Apple has submitted a bid worth at least US$150 million per year to broadcast Formula One in the US and appears to have edged ahead of incumbent rights holder ESPN, according to Business Insider.
The Financial Times reported last week that the technology giant was in talks with the series and planning to challenge ESPN for the next contract, which begins next year.
BlackBook Motorsport understands that Apple and ESPN remain the most serious contenders for the deal, with mooted interest from Netflix now appearing to have cooled.
As BlackBook Motorsport reported in February, ESPN is not willing to retain Formula One at any cost and is keen to avoid overpaying for the rights. The Disney-owned broadcaster currently pays a reported US$90 million per year for the rights."
Our Take: Apple’s forays into movies, prestige television, and niche sports do not actually make Apple any money. Apple is hoovering up properties like ‘F1’ as a means of building cultural capital. Apple is making plenty of money elsewhere, and the attainment of these sorts of properties is meant to enhance the brand.
Musk will need a charmer to keep winning back advertisers at X
"After an exceptionally turbulent start under Elon Musk’s ownership, Twitter is finally winning back advertisers that had fled the platform after the billionaire famously told them to “go f*** yourselves” if they were concerned about rising hate speech on the platform he bought for $44 billion in 2022 and renamed X.
The work to win back those advertisers, which account for about 75 per cent of X’s revenue, was largely down to the efforts of one person: Linda Yaccarino.
The former head of global advertising at the entertainment giant NBCUniversal joined as X’s chief executive in June 2023 and wooed advertisers over champagne and canapés on superyachts at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity on the Côte d’Azur. But this week, in a tweet of course, she quit."
Our Take: Yaccarino’s exit signals a return to Musk’s unfiltered dominance over X. She was a stabilizing force that made advertisers tolerate chaos caused mostly by Musk himself. I think advertisers have seen that the ship can be steadied (to a degree) and this means that they are less likely to impulsively jump ship (as they did when Musk originally took the reins of Twitter). However, Musk is always a tweet away from a crisis and advertisers may gradually distance themselves from the platform. The best course of action would be to immediately hire a Yaccarino-like figure as high-paid cleanup crew.
Exclusive: OpenAI to release web browser in challenge to Google Chrome
"OpenAI is close to releasing an AI-powered web browser that will challenge Alphabet's [Google], opens new tab market-dominating Google Chrome, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The browser is slated to launch in the coming weeks, three of the people said, and aims to use artificial intelligence to fundamentally change how consumers browse the web. It will give OpenAI more direct access to a cornerstone of Google's success: user data."
Our Take: This rumored OpenAI web browser reveals an inevitable shift in strategy to data capture. OpenAI doesn’t just want to power the internet, it wants to be the internet. A browser would provide limitless data points on a user’s web patterns. In retaliation, companies are constructing big, complex technical barriers, such as paywalls, antibot protocols and login screens, to prevent data scraping from OpenAI. Having their own browser means OpenAI will simply be able to circumvent these barriers and have direct access to whatever the person is looking at. It will probably equate in perhaps one of the most comprehensive behavioral data sets in web history. Advertisers will pay OpenAI money hand over fist for these highly specified data points on users when they inevitably begin their ad business in earnest.
Senators Introduce Legislation to Restrict Direct-to-consumer Drug Advertising
"...If enacted, the bill would amend Section 502 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) to prohibit direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs approved under Section 505 of the FDCA or licensed under Section 351 of the Public Health Service Act.2
The bill defines DTC advertising as “any promotional communication targeting consumers, including through television, radio, print media, digital platforms, and social media, for purposes of marketing such a drug.”3 Senator Sanders says the bill would “align the United States with virtually every other country on earth by establishing a ban on direct-to-consumer prescription advertising,” which would include “any forms of media, including social media.”4 He notes that this ban “would apply to all drugs and biologics, including those currently on the market.”5
The bill summary highlights a potential coalition forming to target DTC advertising, noting that Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has repeatedly called for banning DTC advertising of prescription drugs, recently imploring voters to “get President Trump back in the White House and me to DTC so we can ban pharmaceutical advertising.”6 Although the bill does not have any Republican co-sponsors, related legislative initiatives to curb pharmaceutical advertising suggest there may be bipartisan support in Congress for the bill."
Our Take: The passage of a bill to restrict direct-to-consumer drug advertising would have major implications for both radio and cable. Pharmaceutical ads constitute 15% or more of total ad revenue for networks like Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC. This bill, if passed, would equate in a major shakeup of partisan legacy media outlets (as it could potentially shutter operations). For radio, this bill would lead to notable revenue loss in smaller markets that depend of national ad buys to stay afloat. Of course, this is all hypothetical as the bill would likely be challenged on its constitutionality and at minimum delayed in its implementation.
Few Americans pay for news when they encounter paywalls
"Newspaper revenue has been in decline for decades, and most Americans now prefer to get news from digital devices. In this environment, many news organizations – and not just newspapers – put paywalls on their websites or apps, blocking access to articles or other content unless news consumers pay or subscribe.
A horizontal stacked bar chart showing that about three-quarters of Americans run into paywalls sometimes or more often.
The vast majority of Americans (83%) say they have not paid for news in the past year, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in March. Another 17% say they have directly paid or given money to a news source by subscribing, donating or becoming a member during that time.
At the same time, 74% run into paywalls at least sometimes when they are looking for news online. This includes 38% who say they come across paywalled articles extremely often or often."
Our Take: Most people won't pay for news because they already skimmed a tweet or watched a TikTok video that sort of explained it. Also, true news junkies know that you can bypass most paywalls of major news sites by plugging in the URL on an internet archive.
