Weekly Roundup – Week of August 5th, 2024

"One difference is a shift in allegiance from teams to individual athletes. Social media have given fans a direct link to stars of all kinds, including in sports (the most followed accounts on Facebook and Instagram belong to Cristiano Ronaldo, a footballer). Social accounts let athletes “showcase who they are with their helmet off”, as the nfl’s Mr Rolapp puts it. As a result, the old saying that the name on the front of the jersey—the team’s—matters more than the name on the back—the player’s—is being reversed. Ampere Analysis finds that 41% of 25- to 34-year-olds are more interested in individual athletes than teams, twice the share among 55- to 64-year-olds. Mr Macaulay dubs this “fluid fandom”: young sports enthusiasts have little team loyalty and follow their idols wherever they go."

"...The NBA ended up signing an 11-year media rights deal with Disney, which will continue airing games on ESPN; NBC, which will resume its relationship with the NBA for the first time since 2002 and also air games on its streaming platform, Peacock, for the first time; and Amazon Prime Video, who will bring more games to an international audience.
...it was widely reported that Amazon’s offer was for both NBA games and WNBA games, and then reports surfaced that Warner Brothers Discovery was offering a bit less because it only wanted NBA games."

"Mobile betting powerhouse DraftKings
is planning a tax on consumers in states with the highest sports betting tax rates, as the company looks to boost profit.
The company announced Thursday that starting next year, it will implement a gaming surcharge on winning bets in states with multiple betting operators and where the tax rate is above 20%. That includes Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont.
“We decided that the best course of action is to do what really every other industry [does] — whether it’s hotels, taxis — whatever else you buy generally has some kind of tax,” DraftKings CEO and co-founder Jason Robins told CNBC."

"Despite warnings of an impending AI downturn, companies have been ramping up advertising to help market various AI products and services.
Companies spent more than $107 million on ads marketing AI-related products and services in the first half of 2024, more than 19 times the $5.6 million total spent in the same period last year. The findings, based on data provided by MediaRadar, also show the total number of companies buying ads to market AI products increased from 186 in 2023 to 575 so far in 2024. Nearly half of total ad spend came from just three companies with various AI products — IBM, Microsoft, and GoDaddy — which accounted for $52 million, or 48% of total spend through June 2024. Of the rest, just 45 other companies spent more than $100,00 each. (MediaRadar didn’t provide a full list of every company spending on AI-related ads.)"

"...From April through June, reality TV production in the Greater Los Angeles area plummeted by 57% compared with the same period of time last year and 50% compared with the five-year average, according to FilmLA, a nonprofit organization that tracks on-location shoot days and filming permits in the region. (The five-year average excludes three months in 2020 when production shut down because of COVID-19.)
The decline is largely a symptom of an industry-wide contraction that began prior to last year’s strikes and has persisted since. But most forms of production have stabilized at roughly 15% below what FilmLA would consider a normal amount of filming activity in Los Angeles."

"Americans want information about local government and politics. Most say they are at least somewhat interested in news about local laws and policies and local elections. And about two-thirds say they often or sometimes get local political news – higher than the shares who get news on several other local topics, including the economy and sports.
But among Americans who get news on local politics, only a quarter are highly satisfied with the quality of the news they get, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Those who get news about weather, traffic and several other topics are more likely to be satisfied with the news they get in those areas.
...
U.S. adults get news about local government and politics from a variety of different sources. The most common are friends, family and neighbors (70%) and local news outlets (66%).
Just over half (54%) also say they often or sometimes get news about local politics from social media.
Smaller shares say they at least sometimes get local political news from local government websites (32%), local nonprofits or advocacy groups (31%), or local politicians (30%)."

"The value of an AI-powered search bar is straightforward: Instead of having to open and read multiple links, wouldn’t it be better to type your query into a chatbot and receive an immediate, comprehensive answer? In order for this approach to work, though, AI models have to be able to scrape the web for relevant information. Nearly two years after the arrival of ChatGPT, and with users growing aware that many generative-AI products have effectively been built on stolen information, tech companies are trying to play nice with the media outlets that supply the content these machines need.
his morning, the start-up Perplexity, which offers an AI-powered “answer engine,” announced revenue-sharing deals with Time, Fortune, and several other publishers. Moving forward, these publishers will be compensated when Perplexity earns ad revenue from AI-generated answers that cite partner content...OpenAI has been building its own roster of media partners, including News Corp, Vox Media, and The Atlantic, and last week announced its own AI-search prototype, SearchGPT."