Morning Brew Daily - WWE & UFC Billion $$ Merger, Journalist arrested in Russia, Weekend Winners

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

Episode 30: Neal and Toby discuss the billion dollar merger bringing UFC and WWE together under one company and one awesome ticker symbol $TKO, because of course. They also discuss the latest details around the detainment of the WSJ Journalist that was arrested in Russia. Plus the latest drama around paid twitter verification. And Duolingo pulls an epic April Fools joke. Plus Apple Music is helping classical make a comeback. Learn more about our sponsor, Fidelity: https://fidelity.com/stocksbytheslice Learn more about our sponsor, TaxAct: https://www.taxact.com 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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Terms and conditions apply. Good morning, Brudeaily show. I am Neil Fryman. I'm Toby Howell and Neil, we have a winner of our morning brew mug giveaway. So just some quick backstory for anyone who wasn't aware there was a giveaway going on. We ran a contest over the past week where we offered to give away one of these beautiful morning brew daily mugs to anyone who shared the podcast in their family group chat, their work Slack channel, anywhere they have friends gathered online.

So we have a winner. We want to give a quick shout out to Dahlia Hamilton and her dad. Jeff. So Dahlia is a loyal podcast listener, but her dad, Jeff, is maybe the biggest Morning Brew fan out there. She sent us screenshot after screenshot of her dad blowing up the family group chat,

promoting the brew saying, check out this fact, this funny tidbit, check out this news quiz. So truly one of the biggest morning brew families out there. So Jeff and Dahlia, we respect the hustle. We'll toss you an email later today, kind of getting your details so we can ship you this mug. But congrats

Jeff and Dahlia. Yes. And apparently Jeff turns, actually I don't know. We don't know how old he's turning, but his birthday is on Friday, April 7th, so happy birthday. Let's get into our show. It's going to be super packed. Elon Musk goes to war versus the New York Times, and all of us are dumber for it. We have a new mystery Monday segment, so stay tuned what that is. And for the first time since 1860, people are talking about classical music. And we'll discuss why. But first, we've got a new sports entertainment juggerna on our hands. From the top rope, UFC parent company Endeavor Group has come into buy WWE this morning to create a new $21 billion public company that will trade under the

ticker TKO. And before we were talking and I was asking why not KEO? That's way cooler. And apparently Coke has KO. Lave. They ruined all the fun. They ruined all the fun. So it's probably not a coincidence or maybe it is that this came a day after WrestleMania, which is WWE's Super Bowl in Los Angeles. And so if all your friends were, you know, calling off plans this weekend, it's because they were watching WrestleMania. I wonder if that's where hair and makeup will be. Maybe. All right. So I want to just do a quick rundown of who the players are here. So UFC is the ultimate fighting championship. It's the largest mixed martial arts organization in the world. Think Joe Rogan making all those faces from the announcing booth when people get the crap beat out

of each other. That's UFC. WWE is world wrestling entertainment. And I think the, Think WrestleMania scripted wrestling events with celebrities and people like John Sina, The Rock, Triple H. Yeah, no, it's definitely a juggernaut. It's crazy the valuations on this thing. 21 billion for the whole company, $9 billion for the WWE. And I do feel like this is one of those things that if you get it, you're like, oh, yeah, absolutely. And if you don't, you're like fake wrestling, $9 billion company. I don't get it.

But we saw those scenes from WrestleMania. Like, it is packed. It has this massive, massive audience. And I do just want to talk about the audience real quick because one of the things that contributes to this massive valuation is the WWE owns social media. Like absolutely dominates legacy sports leagues. If we just look at YouTube channel subscribers,

these stats are from a month ago, so they're a little outdated, but it's over 92 million YouTube subscribers compared to the NBA, which has 19. The NFL only is 10 million, and the MLB has 4 million. So it just absolutely wipes the floor with these legacy sports companies.

And then, yeah, that's one of the main selling points is that we reach the use. We understand social media and, like, we get all those eyeballs. Right. And I think they're going to be a live sports juggernaut on TV. And that's what's also commanding these big valuations. I mean, nobody watches cable anymore except for the NFL and honestly just the NFL. Yeah. So UFC and WWE can come in and say, look, we have property that we have events and property

that you as entertainment, you know, companies, broadcasters want. And so they can command huge sports rights deals. I mean, the NBA, and these are blowing up anyway. The NFL just agreed to $2.5 billion for their Sunday ticket package with YouTube TV. And that was a billion dollars more than the previous contract rights. And I think both WWE and UFC, their contracts are expiring soon. So they're going to go back to the table and just be an amazing leverage. position. An interesting fact about the television deals too is the

W.W.E and the UFC have no offseason. So they actually command these higher valuations because there is no offseason, whereas the NFL, it's only 18 games now per season. WWE is nonstop. It goes all year long. So it's not attracting as many eyeballs on like a per match or per game basis. But since it has a whole year to play with, it gets there in the end. Can we talk about the people involved in this deal? Because the personalities are larger than life. You have Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel. So for people who don't know, he's the Hollywood power broker who was the inspiration for Ari Gold in Entourage. Then you have Dana

White, who's this larger than life character president of UFC. And then I haven't even mentioned Vince McMahon, WWE's executive chairman, who bought it from his dad for $1 million in 1982 and and then sold it yesterday today for $9.3 billion. So he comes out of this looking pretty good. And two of them are from Massachusetts. Actually, no, Dana White's from Massachusetts and as is Joe Rogan from Massachusetts. So there's some mass blood going through there. A lot of mass blood.

Neal's from Mass. So that's why I bring it up. That is a crazy story. Again, we got to dive into the world of WWE yesterday and this morning. So that was pretty fun for us. I'm not watching it again, though. I watched WrestleMania for an hour. was just like, this is reality.

I'm intrigued. I like, yeah. I saw a guy get kicked in the face by a 300 pound linebacker, essentially, with no muscle, you know, with no fat. And he just takes it in the face 15 times. And if any of those actually connected, he would be in the hospital. Neil, suspend delete. I just believe for a second.

I don't get it. Sorry. Okay. Yuck, anybody's young. We're going to switch gears here for a second. And our second story today is about a wall-strand. Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was arrested last week by Russian authorities in charge with espionage. So over the weekend, tension has kind of continued to rise in this saga.

In a pretty rare phone call, actually, between the U.S. and Russia, the U.S. Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken told his Russian counterpart that Gershkovich's detention was unacceptable and demanded Russia release him and another detained American Paul Whalen. So, Neil, if this story sounds familiar, it's because it is. Like we kind of went through this whole thing with Britney Greiner and her detainment in Russia. We're entering this new era of hostage diplomacy, as the Wall Street Journal called it, which is actually what Gershkovich was in Russia reporting on. But before we get into this idea of hostage diplomacy, we should talk about who Evan is, like who he is as a person. Yeah. So most news stories I try to keep emotional distance from,

but this one kind of hit home. I don't want to say it could have been me scenario. because this guy is way braver doing way cooler stuff like track he uprooted his life here in the United States to go to Russia in 2017 and now he's literally reporting from a war zone so and I'm just here as a podcaster so I want to make that clear but he is both we're both 31 from the like Jewish families from the Northeast work in the same industry so I felt like a little kinship with him but yeah he grew up in New Jersey to Russian immigrants and developed a lifelong fascination with Russia and Russian culture and then kind of just left went went to Bowden College and then picked up his bags and worked in various outlets starting in

2017 in Russia and eventually I think right before the war he he started working for the Wall Street Journal and now he's in jail forever yeah no it's definitely a crazy and again we've mentioned hostage diplomacy but it is this thing now where US citizens are increasingly being like held captive or held in wrongfully detained in countries as a means means of like getting like extorting the u.s. basically and so 54 u.s. citizens deemed to be held hostage or wrongfully detained there are currently 54 in 15 countries such as Cuba Egypt Saudi Arabia and of course Russia because it is this bargaining chip that you can kind of hold over the u.s. in order to get something you want out of them and what do they want

Russia is probably a prisoner swap that's what they they traded victor bout who is known as the merchant of death for brittney griner last December And so that is what people are expecting for Evan here. And something that was interesting was that Bill Richardson, who's the former New Mexico governor, and now he's kind of an expert. He's moved into expert in getting Americans homeed. He said that what we have to do to try to get Evan home is not, is not, is do what we did with Britney Griner, which was, you know, raise awareness and go through media and mount this large

media campaign. And that will sort of like bring, you know, that will accelerate, negotiations and what's interesting is that you this phone call that you were talking about previously that would have taken months to arrange and then here it was four days after Evan was detained over there so we'll see what happens but I think raising awareness around it seems like a really important thing and final note since we're both soccer fans Evan is a big soccer player and my favorite fact is that he came in at Bowden in an NCAA tournament game he

did not play 110 minutes. And then in the penalty kicks, he came in and slotted the game winner. So I don't know, you're better at soccer than me. You can tell me what it's like to not play the entire game and then come in at the end. So tough. I hate when managers, like, sub in a player who hadn't played at all. But hey, Evan, Evan stepped up. And his cello was pretty good.

Let's move on. This is a dumb story, but it is kind of important. It was another chaotic weekend over on the bird app. Elon Musk began removing blue. check marks from accounts that don't pay for Twitter Blue, except he didn't, except he kind of did. The really quick background here is that to bring in more revenue, Musk has been, you know, asking people to pay for subscription, Twitter Blue, which is a subscription, or else they'll lose their checkmark Saturday, April 1st. That sparked an outcry from celebrities who are like,

like LeBron James, who was saying, I'm not paying you, and there were concerns that impersonators could swarm. The point of the checkmark in the first place was to, to verify the identities of famous people. Anyway, the deadline came and went, and for the most part, blue checkmarks were not removed because it was a manual process the Washington reported, and it's like a spreadsheet. It's truly. Did you read that? Yeah, I actually did see that.

People are so confused. First of all, if you're going to set a date for anything, do not set it on April 1st because no one takes it seriously. And then, yeah, everyone's checkmark is still there. Except. You're right, except. Except the New York Times. and this is the very petty thing.

Musk does not like the Times for their critical coverage of him and tech. And after learning that the Times wouldn't pay for a Twitter subscription, Musk said that he would read remove its badge. So the New York Times had its badge removed. And then Musk went on to hurl insides at them. Yeah. I mean, you buried the lead a little bit, too, in the sense that you said he found out that they won't pay for it. He found out by replying to a Twitter account called Doge Designer,

who tweeted at midnight on Sunday a meme. basically saying, like, oh, New York Times, like, won't pay for it. And it was like, I'm saying, I don't care. And then Elon, of course, responds to that two minutes later and says, oh, interesting. Like, maybe we'll just take it away. And that's the one he took away. Obviously, it's a little bit of a joke. Like, I mean, not a joke in the sense that, but it's like petty that he's reacting to

this meme and whatnot. But it is really dangerous to remove the checkmark from New York Times, especially if in the age of misinformation, when you're trying. He's specifically trying to fight bad actors, but it seems like every step he does enables them. Like, let's take the newspaper of, what's it called? What is the time? The gray lady. Nicknamed the gray lady and then maybe the newspaper of record, but I don't know.

Yeah, of record. The newspaper of record, let's take away their checkmark and as a petty feud, yeah. He just messed this whole thing up because he's turned a checkmark into an anti-status symbol. Yeah. The influencers, the people who are famous, don't want it. And a lot of people who have large followings don't want it because it makes it seem like they pay Elon Musk. And no one wants to be seen like that. It's become this very interesting, yes, status switch.

Before we jump to break, one of the things that Twitter has said with the little guidance it's given is that the top Twitter's top 500 advertisers and its 10,000 most followed organizations who were previously very very. verified wouldn't have to pay for verification. Except the New York Times. Except for the New York Times. So I checked in the Morning Brew is the 26,000's 200th month followed account on Twitter. So we're close. Like we got to make up 16,000 and then Morning Brew could keep its check marks. Let's go.

So if social media team. But we don't pay for it. That's important. We don't pay for it. But if we get into that top 10,000, then we won't have to. All right. That was a fun first part of the show. But before we jump into our next story, we're going to take a quick break.

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And I came up with the segment. We'll see if it's good or not. Give us your feedback. All right, so train derailments aren't really a laughing matter, but one derailed in Montana this weekend and spilled an entire car of Coors Light and boat blue moon into an area near a river. And a photographer captured this fisherman who's on his boat. up to the hundreds of cases of beer that had piled up. And this guy has a bottle of Coors Light in his hand with the biggest smile I've ever seen, truly looking like the happiest person in the world. So he won the weekend because he found, you know, hundreds of cases of free beer and he's just a

happy dude, and I'm so happy for him. It is pure joy. Your joy. You know he heard about it. He's, he got his little robo out. I love the fact that it's a robo. Yeah. It's probably like 40 degrees crisp in Montana. Also over there, it's gorgeous where this train derailed. But it is also just zooming out to some more new stuff. It's kind of weird how we hear about trained derailments all the time. Now they probably happen to every day for the past 150 years and we just didn't realize it and now they're being reported on after the East Palestine one. Yeah. No, it is, that is like an interesting ripple of the last news cycle. But I don't think we would have gotten that photo without it. So in a way. Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah. Okay, Neil, that was a great

winner. My winner of the weekend was actually a couple of April Fool's joke. So honestly, April Fool's happened this weekend. It's usually the worst. Like, there's no good ones. But this year, I think there was two brands that actually killed it. The first one is actually Duolingo. So Duolingo, who already has this unhinged presence on TikTok and social media, released this high quality trailer for a reality TV show. They call Love Language and will actually play you a little clip of that trailer right now. Coming soon, the hottest singles in the world will share a house in paradise in hopes of finding true love.

The catch? None of them speak the same language. Niemann Zagme of Us. Introducing love language from Duolingo and Peacock. Do we have a parental guidance feature on our YouTube? That was a little spicy for 9 a.m. That's kind of the joke. Like, it's playing off love.

violent playing off all these reality TV shows. Honestly, no one fell for the April Fool's joke. They knew that they weren't making it, but everyone just respected how hard core they went. It is so well produced. And the worst part is it could be true. That's the root of every good April for the show is like, yeah, I could see it. So that was our first one. And then the second one real quick comes from an unlikely source, chess.com. So they posted an open application for its CEO position. And some of the requirements kind of made Twitter. laugh. And I quote, applicants must be rated at least

1,600 in online chess, have 10 plus years of management experience in tech or gaming, and not have an MBA from Harvard. So, it just made people giggle a little bit. And honestly, this one did fool people. Where people were like, they forgot as April Fool's again.

They saw these requirements, like, wow, chess.com is hilarious. So that was, those were two different approaches to April Fool's that I both think landed pretty well. Yeah, I like the one on chess.com that asked, what was your first memory of chess in parentheses required? I was thinking, yeah, that seems like a reasonable thing for a chess.com CEO to have. It's funny, yeah.

So that was sort of our winners from the weekend. Great segment. Or maybe not. We'll see what the listeners think. Okay, but we're going to jump into our next story. So now this next story, I know, is very near and dear your heart, Neil. So I'll quickly intro it and then kind of turn it over to you. So just before the weekend last week, Apple music release its classical music app to the world.

Now, this doesn't seem like big news, but classical music aficionados like yourself have been kind of going nuts over it. And Neil, I know that you were telling me about the problem and the struggle of listening to classical music on streaming apps. So take us through why this was a big deal. You set me up here, big time, a lot of pressure. But this is a big deal because searching for classical music on Apple Music or Spotify was kind of like using Bing pre-Jat GPT integration. Streaming services are designed for pop songs, which only. have a very limited amount data points, right? You have the song, the artist, and the album. That's it. Classical music has so much more metadata. It has the conductor, the work, the composer, the

ensemble, the movement, the soloist instrument. And then there's also a nickname. So searching for it and surfacing something that's actually good and something you want to listen to is kind of a nightmare. So I want to give you a little example. Okay. Do you know this song? Yeah, there you go. Okay, so that's called Rondo Alaturca, okay? Turkish March, it's by Mozart. Except that, what I just said, is such the tip of the iceberg if you want to get a good recording of this. So that piece is actually part of Mozart's piano sonata number 11 in a major K-30-K331.

And Rondo Al-A-Turka is just the third movement of that. And that's formally called the Aligretto. Okay, so take all of that. That's all the data stringing together its name. And then you have thousands of actual performances that do that same, that play that same piece of music and only, you know, maybe 30 or 40 of them you want to listen to and the rest is trash. It's like searching for Taylor Swift song and getting a bunch of random, you know, people covering in their bedroom. Yeah. So that's what it's like searching for classical music and Apple music, what's this app called?

Apple Music Classic. Apple Music Classic is, you know, making this a lot easier by, you know, making this a lot easier by, giving us better metadata and allowing classical music enthusiasts to search and surface things that are actually good and important. See, this is why I turned it over to you because that example I would not have been able to produce. But yeah, it is truly setting the classical music world on fire because it's clear Apple put a lot of time and effort into this because you're right. It was such a difficult problem to solve.

Like this metadata is crazy. If you start thinking about it, of course you couldn't find good stuff on Spotify. So yeah, it is interesting to see that Apple, like, devoted so much time and resources to it. So it will be interesting to see if they see a meaningful bump in, like, subscriptions to Apple Music, and if this is going to be a game changer in the long term for them. Let's move on to what to watch for the week ahead. And there is so much this, like, this week is absolutely packed. I mean, tomorrow's going to be a zoo down in lower Manhattan because President Trump is coming to be arraigned for his indictment.

And we'll actually learn the charges against him over. It's expected to be over these hush money payments. We'll get the mugshot. We'll get the fingerprints. But we're not going to get the handcuffed per block because he is reportedly going to voluntarily give himself up for a arrangement. So if he had it, he would be in handcuffs. So still going to be a crazy day. It's going to be a circus down there.

Tonight is the national championship game for the men's basketball tournament. Yukon versus San Diego State. We called Yukon. No one saw San Diego State. We called you called you. I called Yukon. You called Yukon. But last night we have talked about the women's basketball game, which was everyone was talking about.

I'm still so mad at the refs. I cannot believe. They gave Caitlin Clark a technical for just the softest technical I've ever seen. Good game to LSU, but like I was really mad at the ref. This might have been women's college basketball. It's calming out party as we talked about. I mean, it was all over social media. Everyone was talking about it, and this sport is growing.

So exciting. I loved watching it. oil prices will be in focus. They're actually jumping up 8% this morning after OPEC plus, a group of oil producing countries led by Saudi Arabia announced a production cut. That sent prices spiking this morning, and

that is not good for inflation or gas prices over here. Can't catch a break. Can't catch a break. As two guys who don't own cars, we can't catch a break. I just like following it, and people love to complain about it. So I'm sure we'll hear about it if gas prices do go up. That won't be for

a couple weeks down the road. Um, spring holidays. So we got Passover on Wednesday, Easter on Sunday, and then Good Fridays on Friday, and the stock market will be closed then. It's always the wildest that Good Friday closes the market down. You always forget about it. Is it a federal holiday? I guess so. It's a bank. It's a bank holiday. Yeah. That's really weird. Um, yeah, I'm hosting my first Sater. So I've got to go, I'm going to leave like right now and go start cooking some matzabal soup. Um, what else we got? McDonald's is temporarily closing its offices this week ahead of expected layoffs in its corporate. Division. Today, later today, NASA will reveal the four astronauts heading to the moon around the moon on the Artemis II mission, which is slated for November 2024. Let's be honest.

I would love to go. I'm excited about that, too, because we know the study that more kids want to be YouTubers now than astronauts, so maybe this might turn the tide back if they start going to the moon again. And then a tournament near and dear to our hearts. Masters tease off on Thursday. Tiger Woods is playing. I just hope he makes the cut.

And then the March drop reports will be released on Friday. That could have just been our entire show. Right there. We're also hosting the final four for our best, greatest logo of all time. So head to our socials at MB Daily show. Show. On Instagram and Twitter. Yeah, we have a final four.

Final four. Let's vote on that. Or you could just email us at Morningbrewdaily at Morningbrew.com. As always, a big mazzletoe to our control room in the back and all the amazing people who work there. Shows producer and editor is Emily Milliron. The show's technical director is Justin Orlando, our supervising. producer is Bryce Belloff. Kelsey Jones is our kickbutt audio engineer. Hair and makeup is down by the courthouse, staking out a good spot for Trump's arraignment for us. Hair and makeup,

so thoughtful. 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. All. Pay off your home. Travel for life. Drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly Big Board Buck slot machine by Aristocrat Gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving one person a $1.6 million dollar dream package. The biggest prize in Yamava's history. Club Serrano members can earn daily instant prizes and secure a spot in the finale May 29th. Don't pass go and own it all.

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