Morning Brew Daily - Wildfire Smoke Stuns Northeast & Apple and Adidas Bring Messi to MLS

Episode Date: June 8, 2023

Episode 77: Neal and Toby discuss the economic fallout from the Canadian wildfire smoke that has stunted the Northeast the past two days. They also break down soccer superstar Lionel Messi's historic deal with MLS team Inter Miami how Apple and Adidas share deals factored into his arrival to the US. Plus, why Martha Stewart says everyone should return to the office. Neal shares his favorite numbers from the week and there's a mystery person in Ohio who has found themselves in a sh**** situation. Learn more about our sponsor, Fidelity: https://fidelity.com/stocksbytheslice Listen Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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pwc.com slash U.S. slash brew AI. That's pwc.com slash us slash brewaI. Good morning brew daily show. I am Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howe. On today's episode, of course, we're going to talk about what everyone else is talking about, which is this wildfire smoke, blanketing the Northeast U.S. right now. We're going to try to get through that one without coughing.

I have a lot of confidence in us. And if you're a pickleball fan, I've got a list of the cities with the most pickleball courts per capita so you can dink to your heart's delight. then we'll break down the specifics of the contract that lured leonel messy to the shores of south beach before finishing up with a story about some sewage sleuthing that led one doctor to turn to poop to track down a cryptic strain of COVID. Neil, it's Thursday, June 8th, let's rat. All right, so yesterday at the end of the show, just before we told you what hair and makeup were up to, we asked you all to write in and tell us where you are listening to the show from.

And holy moly, you have us feeling like Pitbull because Morning Brew Daily is giving Mr. Worldwide a run for his money. Neil, take us through some of the locations that came through the email and the YouTube comments yesterday. Sure, we got listeners in Hong Kong, Australia, Puerto Rico. I'm not going to say it like from. Monterey, Mexico, Oakland, California, Boise, Idaho, Brazil, Atlanta, India, We had a Mita writing in from Tanzania, so we could form our own United Nations.

I love that Boise. I don't know. Just made it in there, too. Shout out Boise. But yeah, thanks you to everyone who listens. And I can't believe how global we are. Yeah, I mean, the internet. Globalization.

Let's go to our first story. Yesterday had very March 2020 vibes here in New York City. People were walking around in masks. They were urged to spend most of their time in their homes. events were canceled and social media users became experts in something they hadn't even heard about the day before. Of course, I am talking about this wildfire smoke that choked the city and other regions of the northeast yesterday. It seems, again, it's going to be bad today. And I don't want to blame Canada on everything, but you have to blame Canada for this.

Because smoke from more than 400 wildfires raging in Canada right now has drifted down to the U.S. and caused these really apocalyptic scenes of Orange Haze reminiscent of, Blade Runner or Mars. I don't know what Mars looks like, but I can imagine it was pretty close. It was really, really unhealthy. According to Stanford researchers, yesterday was likely the worst day for wildfire smoke in American history in terms of the number of people who were exposed to toxic wildfire smoke. And New York City had the worst air quality of any city in the world. America first, baby. Number one. Let's go. So the smoke besides freaking everyone out was truly disruptive to daily life and the summer economy.

So the FAA slowed flights headed to Newark, LaGuardia, and Philadelphia International Airport because of the low visibility. Thousands of flights were delayed. The home games of the New York Yankees and the Phillies were canceled. Schools across the Northeast canceled all outdoor activities. So that must have been fun for parents who had to pick up their kids without running around. Some Broadway shows, including Hamilton, were canceled because the performers were having trouble singing.

So were many other outdoor events, including concerts and plays. and thankfully they canceled the horse carriage rides around Central Park out of concern for the animal's health. Just make that permanent, please. It's like the world's worst snow day where you get none of the benefits of like knowing that it's, you're going to have a work from home day. By the way, we did not cancel the podcast, even though we're doing a little coffin right here. I also think it's funny that all the West Coasters and the Californians and the people from

Oregon, Seattle area are saying, looking at us, freaking out about wildfires and saying, you know that this happens to us every single year. And only when it finally hits New York is getting all this outsized media coverage. So I thought that was a really funny dynamic on social media yesterday. I was talking to my friend in Colorado and he's like, yeah, this happens all the time out here. And what you saw was, I bet you air purifier sales are through the roof right now. We were seeing it on social media yesterday. People were posting signs on hardware stores saying we do not have any air purifiers, go elsewhere. It's actually there's also this SEO arms race that's happening.

I just Googled air purifiers. And you see every major news publication has a story saying, here's where you can find an airfire for 25% off. So it's a very interesting thing to see how internet companies kind of jumped on this and using it for SEO. Yeah, it's just, it's affecting everyone. So just want to talk about the health impact. Smoke from wildfires, it's not good for you. And obviously, it's worse for vulnerable people, older people, children, people with heart disease, asthma, other respiratory diseases.

And you can protect yourself by definitely staying indoors, but that's not all you can do because outdoor contaminants can get into indoors as well. As we were sitting in the office yesterday and we're like, it smells like freaking bonfire out here. So they recommend you turn on the AC because an HVAC system. can sort of circulate the air if you have one and then you can also get a portable air purifier which is what you know our friends in Colorado and the West Coast have and you can also track the air quality using various apps so the EPA has this app called Air Now which experts recommend you download and can sort of scope out the scene that way it is does not look good right now

yeah but you know these people all in the West Coast are I saw I read about someone living in Sacramento who's like, yeah, everyone out here has these apps downloaded, and we, it's sort of the way of life. And people living in Asian countries as well are sort of just used to this. And here in New York, we're like, this is the first time we've ever experienced it. This is the worst ever. Although one final note on air quality, so yesterday, actually on Tuesday, air pollutions hung around 52 to 70 micrograms of pollutant per cubic meter of air. That's how you measure air pollution. And that's still lower than the 100 to 200 micrograms per cubic meter. That was the annual average concentration in New York City in the

60s and 70s. That was before the Air Quality Act, the Clean Air Act was passed. And so air quality in New York used to be really, really bad and almost like a wildfire was happening every single day. So I am never taking fresh air for granted again. Exactly. That's the takeaway. And for many people, this was a sign of like the climate change crisis, like happening now and just going into the future. You're already seeing insurers like state farm and all state, not insuring homes in California because of the wildfires. And it's just like, damn, this is our new normal. It's dystopian, man. All right.

Let's move on. Neil the goat. My goat, the greatest soccer player on earth. Leonel Messi has decided where he will be playing soccer next season. It's not Barcelona. it's not in Saudi Arabia. It's in my home state of Florida, baby. Messi is officially on his way to Major League Soccer

where he will play for Inter-Myami. So how did a league that calls it soccer and not even football convince our boy Leo to come? Well, a contract has not officially been signed yet, but it's reportedly a complex two-and-a-half-year deal with a total value well over $100 million. But that number feels surprisingly low when you consider that Messi reportedly turned down a nearly $400 million per year deal from Saudi Arabia.

But here's the magic of the Inter-M Miami deal. According to reports, it includes agreements with Adidas, who is the main sponsor of the MLS, where Messi would snag a cut of any increase in Adidas' profits resulting from his involvement in MLS. There's also reportedly a similar deal that involves Apple TV Plus, who bought the broadcast rights to MLS for $2.5 billion. dollars earlier this year. And finally, there's likely a piece that would see Messi getting a stake in Inter-Miamy itself, which is currently valued at $600 million. You can better believe, though, that that number will go up once Messi's signing is completed. So overall, the financial piece has a ton of

upside for Messi. Plus, he gets to play in the best league in the world. That's objectively not true. Tugging cheek. That is objectively not true. But I think let's talk about the Apple thing, because that's super interesting. Apple last year paid MLS 2.5 billion dollars to be the exclusive broadcast home of MLS across 100 countries on this program called Apple's season pass MLS season for the next 10 years. Not for one year. We're not at that level yet. But basically, Messi now has a rev share with every new subscriber that signs up for this MLS season pass on Apple. He gets a cut of that, Yeah, which I was looking while, you know, reading these streaming experts and they're like, we have never seen anything like this because for Adidas, these merchandise and apparel companies,

it's kind of common for them to chip in to bring huge stars from one team to another. But it's kind of unheard of in this streaming age for, you know, Apple, I was going to say a media company, but it literally makes iPhones to chip in and say like, Messi, you're going to help us out because all these people not only in the United States, but around the world, probably a ton in Argentina, are now going to be watching MLS soccer and signing up for our service. And we want you to have a piece of that as a carrot to come to the MLS. I mean, honestly, the Adidas relationship is really interesting, too,

because in most other leagues, there's a variety of kind of sportswear sponsors. Like Manchester United is an Adidas team, but Manchester City wears Puma. But in the MLS, every single team wears Adidas because it, it is kind of the presenting sponsor of the league. And so that's why Adidas is willing to chip in to bring Messi in, because hypothetically, Messi brings more eyeballs. I mean, he will. So it's a good deal for them.

And then also I wanted touch on the point of him getting a stake in Inner Miami. MLS franchises are kind of punch above their weight in terms of how much they're worth. And that's because in the MLS there's no promotion or relegation, which is, again, a staple people who watch soccer, know that every other European league has promotion relegation. And while it's super fun for fans, it's horrible for team owners because if you get relegated, you lose the lucrative TV sharing deal that the top leagues have.

And basically the value of your franchise plummets in the U.S. in order to convince owners to buy a franchise, they can't have a promotion relegation. And so these franchises hold their value very well. So you better believe that Inter-Miamis' 600 million, dollar valuation is only going to keep ticking upwards. So yeah, this deal, Messi the businessman. It is a really creative, interesting deal, and it could be a huge, you know, huge moment for MLS. Definitely the biggest signing since David Beckham in 2007.

He went to Los Angeles. I mean, just one instance of the, one example of this is that Inter Miami's Instagram doubled in the hours. Their number of followers doubled in the hours after Messi signed. So it could be, you know, it could be a little bit of a needle moving. moment for MLS and it's super exciting. I'm pumped. All right, there is a ton of back to the office news I want to talk about. Let's first go with this cautionary tale about when you let workers go remote. It is a tall task to bring them back to the office. So the insurance company Farmers is finding out right now the hard way because its employees are revolting after its new CEO said many of them will soon be required to come back to the office for three days a week. the Wall Street Journal reported. The problem is that this company last year promoted a flexible remote culture. Many of the employees took that to mean,

okay, I'm going to move to a different city. I'm going to sell my car because I don't need that for a commute anymore. They spent a lot of money upgrading their home offices and they are just super angry about having to come back to the office. Employees left more than 2,000 angry comments on the company's internal social media network and some are threatening to quit or unionize saying they were misled. Now, obviously this is bad, but we want to talk about it because it's not an isolated incident. We've seen this kind of backlash with other companies that are doing a bit of a office U-turn. Disney, Amazon, and Lyft are dealing with really angry employees who are promised remote work but are now being required to return to the office at least some of the time

to, you know, executives think that this is just better overall for the company. I learned this from being a camp counselor for many years. You can always go from strict to lenient, but you can not go the other way around because you've just set the expectation. Yeah, no, that's the main takeaway here is you can't yet give them the benefit and then try to take it away. And it's so interesting because my whole shift on this, my whole perspective on this has shifted since coming into an office. It's so bad, but I kind of see where it's coming from where it is so much better, especially in our line of work where creativity and collaboration is actually very important. That's where I always think it falls a little flat is the farmer's insurance

CEO is saying that's why we're coming back to the office to increase creativity and collaboration in insurance. Like it doesn't seem as, I don't know, I can see it for Disney, for instance. That makes a lot more sense. So you just feel dupes though when you say. Yeah, it's all about communication. I mean, you can you can debate the merits of office work or not an office work, but it is all about, you know, what executives are saying and how they back it up. Speaking of PR, does disasters. Salesforce wants to get its employees back into the office. Its CEO, Mark, Benny Office had a complete U-turn. He said, early in the pandemic, he was like, oh, remote work is great. And now he said that the employees that he hired for remote work were less productive than the

ones in office. So they're doing this fundraising initiative called Connect for Good. And they're donating $10 to a local charity for each day an employee comes into the office between June 12th and June 23rd. This got a lot of backlash for, you know, being called emotionally manipulative of workers to say like, hey, if you don't, you know, this child is going to go hungry if you don't come back to the office. Yeah. I mean, it's ridiculous too because the workers are like, just give us the money and we'll decide to donate to charity. Don't do it on our behalf. So yeah, you're seeing these PR nightmares. One final thing on this return to office debate. Martha Stewart weighed in. Of course.

kind of from the top rope. She's everywhere. You can't escape her. In a recent interview with Footwear News, she said, you can't possibly get everything done working three days a week in the office and two days remotely. That was her baseline stance. And then she just ricochet shot at France for some reason. She goes, look at the success of France and their stupid, you know, off for August, blah, blah, blah. This is a direct quote. That's not a very thriving country. So it's just funny that people just have these very, very deep-seated feelings about the office, especially when you came from a generation where it wasn't an option at all. So I would just keep my mouth shut about this if I'm a public figure. But she kind of does have a point with France. If you have friends with

anybody who works with Europe, they will tell you that you cannot get in touch with anyone over the summer. They just don't work over the summer. I love it. I love it. I know. It's amazing for work life balance, but you know, America's GDP is a lot higher than this, so I'll just say that. True that. All right, before we jump into the next half of our show, we're going to take a quick break. It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting at $179, like the next grill three burner gas grill, or get $50 off a select Weber Spirit grill and bring big flavor to your backyard. Then set the scene with Hampton Bay string lights that bring

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ends June 30th, terms at AKA.m.m.m.m. slash college PC. All right, let's get into Neal's numbers, which is the segment where I share three facts or figures or stats from the week's news after I did all my reading. Let's go with number one is if you're thinking of moving to a new city and the availability of pickleball courts is important to you, which it is to many, yes. I've got list of the U.S. cities with the most pickleball courts per capita, according to a new study from the trust for public land, which is doing the Lord's work here. So number one on the list is Seattle with 20.5 courts per 100,000 people. Number two is St. Petersburg, Florida. Then we got Lincoln, Nebraska, surprise, Surprised, Surprised, Surprised, Honolulu, and Madison, Wisconsin. The least

amount of pickleball courts per capita, and this may be for some people who don't want to hear the noise all the time. Well, I would suggest moving to Fresno or Buffalo, both with virtually none. So pickleball, the reason we're talking about this, it is the fastest growing sport in the U.S. right now, and they just can't build enough courts to satisfy demand. In the biggest, in the hundred biggest U.S. cities, the number of public pickleball courts has spiked sixfold from 420 in 2017 to 2,800 now. You know, I love pickleball. This is music to my ears, Neil. And it makes sense Seattle because I'll drop my fact. Pickleball was invented on Bainbridge Island, which is an island off near Seattle.

It's also where my girlfriend's from. And so I've spent a lot of time there. And they have like the origin of pickleball courts in the park. It's steep into the very history of Bainbridge Island. So it makes sense that Seattle's number one. Are they building a pickleball Hall of Fame there? That's where it would be. That's where it would be.

Truly. I don't know if they have like the space. It's kind of a small island. And so I love to see pickleball. And then I know I just want to bring this up because we talked about Swimply a couple, maybe last week, which is the startup that helps people rent out private swimming pools in their backyard. It recently said it was moving into the pickleball space. So it's allowing people to rent out pickleball courts to others. And it said that the revenue from its pickleball division, it's expecting that to pass revenue from its swimming pool division in the next few years.

Crazy. So does it have to change its name to? I don't even know. Maybe it will. Pickle ball limply. Maybe it will. Let's move on. So it's a tale as old as time. A kid find their parents' debit card and burns their life savings by buying things on mobile games.

This time, a 13-year-old girl in China and her friends spent $64,000 on mobile game transaction with her mother's debit card. And when the teacher called her mom about the girl's potential video game addiction, the mom checked her bank account and found a balance of just $0.7. and kind of freaked out. So the story of this extremely large allowance went viral in China, receiving more than 140 million views on Weibo, China's version of Twitter.

And I think it hit a nerve because the government has treated video addiction, video game addiction in China as a serious threat, putting internet restrictions on teens and children. And the government says teens aren't supposed to play video games for more than three hours a week. But it's also a problem in the U.S. I mean, how many stories have we read

of kids, you know, somehow stumbling on their parents' credit cards or getting their payment information and spending thousands of dollars on games like Roblox, which make it so easy to buy these like in-game purchases or what they're called micro-transactions. Yeah. Although I did this particular news story out of China, she was like covering up and like hiding the bank account. So this was not her accidentally stumbling upon it. Do we know what game it is or is it not something that would be recognizable? I'm just going to imagine it's candy crush in that she really wanted a bunch of extra lives, $64,000 worth of them. This is just a huge thing.

So the global micro-transaction market is growing to $76 billion this year from $68 billion last year. These games make it so easy for you. They lure you in to make it free. And then they say, like, buy this, buy this, by this, by this. So you can have a better experience. All right. Our final Neal's number, it's less of a stat and more of a summer travel tip for any

thrill seekers in the audience here. One of the most anticipated new roller coasters of the year, Wildcats Revenge, is just opened in Hershey Park, PA, a park I used to go to as a kid. This is Neil's number, so I got to hit you with some stats on this ride. You're going to go up 140 feet on the lift hill and then plummet into the abyss on 82 degrees of descent. That seems quite steep. You're going to hit a max speed of 62 miles per hour. Then over the course of the two minute and 30 second long ride. You're going to hit four different inversions, including the world's largest underflip, which I cannot say I know what an underflip is, to be honest. I think it's just a more intense loop-to-loop. Maybe. What's interesting about this particular

roller coaster is it is an homage to two previous coasters at this park. Wildcat was the name of the first ever coaster at Hershey Park. It was built 100 years ago in 1923. Then another wildcat was built in 1995, that coaster closed last year, but on the final ride were the parents of a teenage ride operator who died of cancer and his favorite ride was Wildcat. So it's kind of a poignant moment. Yeah, this is steep in history. And I come from, I'm from Florida, which is kind of the roller coaster capital of the world. And so I want to know, this is interesting because that's 62 mile an hour top speed. There's a roller coaster in Bush Gardens called Cheetah, like something Cheetah Sprint, which I think is the fastest roller coaster in the world.

So I'm going to have to do. It's just it's a ride that. No, I mean like, what is the speed? I know. I need to look it up and compare and see if Cheetah is faster than Wildcat and maybe do a little trip to Hersheyville. Hershey Park. Hershey Park.

You're not an northeast guy. I am not a roller coaster guy. I am even teacups. Like, I won't go on. I won't go on tecups. Oh, my Lord. Oh, my Lord. All right, Neil.

Let's move on to our fifth and final story. which is actually all about number two. That's right, we got a story about poop to close out the show. Apparently, there is this mystery person in Ohio that scientists have been tracking for literally two years who has a unique never-before-seen strain of COVID. So how does poop come into play here? Well, COVID actually shows up in human waste

and analyzing wastewater has been a decently reliable measure for tracking the spread of COVID over the life of the pandemic. So enter Dr. Mark, Johnson of virologists at the University of Missouri. He noticed a cryptic strain, which is a highly specific mutation of COVID, kept popping up in a certain area of Ohio. His hypothesis was that it's coming from one person and through various tracking methods, he even narrowed it down to a point where he thinks the mystery pooper lives

in Columbus, Ohio, and that they commute to work in a city about 45 minutes away. Just a fantastic story, Neil. Yeah. If you, yeah, this is freaking wild. This person has had COVID for more than two years is just shedding viral loads every day. They know exactly where they work. They know exactly where they live. I don't understand how they haven't found this person yet. So if you live in Columbus, commute to Washington courthouse, aren't feeling well because this person is not feeling well. They have two years. serious GI problems right now. And you are, you know, maybe going to the bathroom in both places and you're ending up in the watershed. Contact this guy, Mark Johnson. This is his pet project. He needs to find out who this is because he says it's actually important for learning more about long COVID because this person's had it for over two years. Yeah. It's a, it's a funny story. But yeah, it could be a great unlock for long COVID. What a show. I'm kind of scared about leaving the office to see

what it's like outside. Please write us in Morning Brew Daily at Morningbrewdly at Morningbrew.com. We love hearing from you. Huge shout out to our crew for waking up early and braving the smoke to make the magic happen.

Emily Iron is our editor and producer. Samantha Velas and Raymond Liu are the associate producers. Yuchenoa Ogu is our technical director. Billy Minino is on audio. Aaron Makeup has joined the hunt for the Columbus COVID pooper. Devin Emery is our chief content officer

and our show is a production of morning brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamavah Theater.com. Only at Yamava Resort and Casino celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 20. you want to enter.