Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - The Other Business Stories Catching our Attention

Episode Date: December 24, 2024

See more music, talk to strangers, play more games. Ricky Mulvey, Mary Long, and Asit Sharma take a look at the business-adjacent stories that caught their attention over 2024. They discuss: - The rise of concert ticket prices. - Why companies trying to solve the loneliness epidemic are in a difficult business. - The implications of widespread sports gambling. And a heads-up, Motley Fool Money returns on Friday, December 27. Companies mentioned: LYV, MTCH, BUMBL, GRND, DKNG, FLUT Host: Ricky Mulvey Guests: Mary Long, Asit Sharma Engineer: Rick Engdahl Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

let's go a little bit outside of market news it's almost christmas you're listening to motley full money awesome mary it's christmas eve so we're gonna do some lighter topics we're not just doing market news today so i thought we could do some business adjacent stories that have just kind of caught our attention this year ones we've been thinking about and you know have a little bit of a looser motley fool money than we normally do. I said this so I go last if we get to it at all. But I'm going to go with the analyst who thinks more about money and finance and stocks. So I'm going to go with Asit. Asit, what is your business adjacent story that you've been thinking about

this year? Well, Ricky, the three of us love music so much. And sometimes we need to get on and tape a show. We're still talking about bands and concerts. So I was thinking about this leading up to one of our last episodes of the year, I've been wondering about the price of tickets for concerts. Back of the napkin math here, but the average ticket price to see Taylor Swift this year works out to about $200. Now, back in the 70s and 80s, to go to a high-demand concert, the price was much less, like $10. Now, we do have to adjust that for inflation, But even when you plug this through an inflation calculator, it looks like folks used to pay about $50 to go to a big name concert back in the day.

So my question to start out for the two of you is, why the heck do ticket prices cost in some cases quadruple what they did 30 or 40 years ago? Before I dive into answer, I'm going to kind of highlight the $200 point that you brought up for Taylor Swift because my first reaction to that is, wait, it was way more. And there was like a whole new genre of media over the past two years dedicated to the wild amounts of money that people spend, not just for heiress tour tickets, but for buying merchandise associated with the concert, like all the money that people spent to travel, not just see the show, but get to the cities where the show is playing, et cetera. So my immediate reaction was it has to have been more

than that. But I mean, I went to the heiress tour. I spent $120 on a ticket, was lucky enough to get something at face value originally. So actually that $200 number might be kind of more in line. Who's to say? I'm going to use this all to segue into the fact that I think one of the reasons that ticket prices have skyrocketed so much is because of this social media virality piece. Not only are you paying to go to the concert, but you're paying to be a part of something that, hey look around you everybody is going to this um and then you get to like it's it's the part of the premium is like the social status of saying hey i was there too to quote taylor swift it was rare i was there and i get to relive that experience in perpetuity on social media so i

think that's kind of my big reason is it's not just about going to see the show and listening to this artist that you love anymore sure that's a piece of it but it's also about participating in what kind of becomes something that seemingly takes over all of the culture for a given period of time. So you're saying future bragging rights are embedded in that ticket price? Little bit, little bit. There's definitely a social standing. If you have a photo of you on Instagram at the ERAs tour showing what a wonderful time you had, in part because it was so difficult to get tickets for that, right? There's so many people who wanted to go but weren't able to. I remember I was trying to get tickets to go see Taylor Swift in Denver,

and it was absolutely impossible. I was one of those people. Mary, it was for Sam. But anyway, I think there's this line from Scott Galloway where he's made this point that it's never been more difficult to be a millionaire, but it's never been easier to be a billionaire. And it has to do with this sort of winner-take-all economy that we live in, especially in internet culture. There are things that everybody suddenly knows about in ways that I don't think existed pre-internet. Think about how everyone knows who the Costco guys are right now, right?

And it's just these things happen all of a sudden become a focal point. Taylor Swift was doing stadium shows for years and years, probably an inappropriate comparison. But I think it's because even though the internet was originally supposed to create more niche interests, what's ended up happening is you have that monoculture where everyone knows about a few certain artists.

So the biggest acts right now are absolutely impossible to get tickets to. You think of probably Zach Bryan, Taylor Swift. I put Olivia Rodrigo in that list when she was doing her arena tours. You're not getting tickets to that, and it's a social statement to be able to go. But what we are starting to see, I think, and this happened this year, was a swing back. Maybe where people were saying, enough with these excessive ticket prices, specifically with the Black Keys. So the Black Keys were going to do an arena tour saying, we want to charge about $150 for lower-level arena seats.

and you know i'm a fan of the black keys i saw the lonely boy tour i'm from ohio i like them but i wasn't going to spend 150 to go see him thinking you know this is like a this is like a 50 ticket and i i think something that happened this year despite the focal point of taylor swift you are starting to see a swing back in terms of ticket prices yeah i i think you're on to something there that things are swinging back ricky i also though want to say there's a different experience today for younger people because they do have maybe a parasocial relationship with a star and not an unhealthy way. I think there's so many young women who grew up with Taylor Swift. So a bond forms and you are willing to fork out more to have that experience in person with the

artist who you feel like you've lived your life experiences alongside things that you found in that music that were going on in your life, make that bond ever stronger. And I want to say for acts like the Black Keys, which they've been around for a while. Maybe they don't have that close association. We're talking about everything here, but the music in some ways. And there was a simpler time when the music was much more the value point of buying that ticket. So you could still love a band, but if it wasn't economically feasible for you, I think you could take that pass. And maybe that's what you're drawing here, one thread that's interesting to follow. I think it's a great time to be a fan of concerts right now. This year, I saw the most impressive

concert of my life. I went to Sphere and saw Dead in Company. And I mean, my mind was blown by that. Anyone who's been there to see a live show is raving about it. That was a $200 ticket. But when I walked out of it, I was like, yeah, that was absolutely worth the money. And in some ways, it was like living in the future for those few hours. Well, some of my favorite concerts that I've ever been to have been in really small venues. So one of the best concerts I went to this year was pretty unexpected. It was for an artist whose name is JD Clayton, and he had shown up on my Discover Weekly on Spotify. And it was one of those moments where you hear the song for the first time and you kind of stop in your tracks and you're like, oh, that, I like that. And so it

made me like go to his page, start listening to more of his music. And I saw because Spotify told me, hey, he's going to be in Denver pretty shortly and went to this awesome concert at a great local venue. Tickets were $20, including fees. And I convinced a bunch of pals to come join me for this. They'd never heard of him before. And it was just a fantastic experience. And part of what made that experience so awesome, but also it has been the case with so many other live shows I've gone to at small venues, is this, it's not really, I guess maybe it's a parasocial relationship that you develop with the artist. But for me, it's like you can tell how amped they are to just be there. And I don't know that you get that same feeling. I have not always gotten that same

feeling at a stadium show. It's this intimacy between artist and audience that they're just stoked that they get to play and there's anyone that's watching them at all. And that like brings out a lot of the magic of live music to me. And I think it's, I hesitated saying parasocial because I don't know that it's that that feeling has ever left me like more interested in the personal life or feeling like I have a friendship with the artist, but it makes me like root for them in a way, kind of like they're, they're like someone that I went to school with and that I'm kind of cheering on from afar rather than someone that I'm pretending to know. And that's like a really lovely bond to, to have with an artist. Mary, how much did you pay for that ticket for

that concert? Less than $20. Okay. Yeah. 20 bucks, including fees. So I can totally sympathize with this because there are some great venues around where I live. I live near a few college towns, actually. And that's like a starting price, 18 bucks, not just for a new band that might be coming together, but for a good act that you have followed for a while that comes through town. And I would say there's a certain type of artists who never quite hits the stratosphere. They're super talented. You love their music when they debut. And then you see them several years later, still on a relatively small venue circuit, because we all know the economics of Spotify aren't in the favor of the artists. And so some of these artists still go around. I don't think

they sell CDs as much anymore, but definitely the merch aspect is there. And it's great to be able to come back a few years later and see an artist, again, for me, that I associate with a certain time in my life. I have a very eclectic mix always going on. So I find that several years passed and I was in a certain frame of mind and a theme, and I can sort of relive that again. That's not quite even related to that parasocial relationship, but it's meaningful. And I just love small venues as well because they're so intimate. The acoustics are generally, in some cases, terrible, but so much better than a stadium, right? And in a great club, you get everything you get atmosphere you you're packed you know cheek to jowl with with other

human beings who have also come for this experience and so i tend to love those adjusted for inflation those tickets are a much better deal than your average like big venue ticket you like being packed cheek to jowl at a concert i need a little bit of space i don't know what you're doing about this throughout 2024 how socially isolated i am in an era of remote work and this has something to do with mary's topic we'll get to this so i think to a couple of things that stand out to me one is that mary when i look at jd clayton i put him up on spotify he has one album out so he's still kind of relatively new to the scene but he's on you know playlists with with folks like like gary clark big blues artists big rock artists and i think it goes to honestly

my point that you see this huge disconnect like uh noah khan right now the biggest folk act is going to easily sell 30,000 tickets in Denver. But if you're like the fifth biggest folk act, if you're the 10th biggest folk act, you're not getting anywhere close to that. And then to Asit's original question, something that I think is important compared to the time of the Eagles, now there's significantly less friction to buy tickets. It's also an e-commerce store. You don't have to call somewhere. You don't have to show up somewhere to get tickets. You can look, pick your seat, and then that's allowed not only just more buyers, more demand, but also you see it from Ticketmaster, the ability to completely figure out the market

for what something's going to cost. A front row seat is now premium. We can make seats even in the balcony, in the rafters of an arena premium if we see that it's selling out due to dynamic pricing. And I think that's played into what you're talking about. Let's go to Mary's story. Mary, what's your business adjacent story? My business adjacent story will come as no surprise to anyone who's ever heard me talk about my latest rabbit hole, because this is it. I am really fascinated by the loneliness epidemic. And I kind of smile as I say that, because I think that this is a really genuine problem. We just heard Asit allude to it or mention it directly. You know, remote work has a lot of people starved in some ways for more in-person human connection. I think it's kind of easy to write off, again, the loneliness epidemic. It's it's it's that's a funny phrase to say and hear and take fully seriously. But I do think it's a very genuine issue. What's fascinating to me is is how many businesses I am seeing try to solve it. And while I think the issue itself is very real, I'm cynical about a lot of the purported solutions, especially those from tech companies.

So I'm talking in large part about dating and friendship apps here because increasingly dating apps are trying to tap into the platonic market as well. Kind of wild to refer to human relationships as a market, but here we go. But I'm also seeing I do a lot of work at a WeWork in Denver and I see postings there all the time about, hey, find your community. Let's build our community. And again, I appreciate those efforts on one hand, but I also think that they're tapping into something that that search for community is so prevalent. It also is kind of sad to me. I'm increasingly seeing, and maybe it's just because I'm paying attention to it, social clubs that will offer memberships for like

$200 a month. There's a mountain collective that's prominent in Denver, but it's kind of scattered throughout the West called Gravity House. And they offer a number of things. There's a gym that you can have access to. There's a co-working space. But part of their pitch is, hey, it's harder and harder to find community these days. And here's a way to do it. Just pay us this price. And again, I don't really know what to make of this because while I think it's fascinating that so many businesses are trying to address this problem, I don't know that the answer is actually, is actually best solved by a business plan. I think it's solved by something else. So I was going to kick this to you guys, not only just for your thoughts, but how I know

both of you are interested in cultivating community and, and being engaged in, in, in a number of different ways. And so how do you, how do you find that out in the world? I'll answer it. And then I want to, Mary, I want to, I want to get to your cynicism, because I think that that's interesting. The best advice that I could give if you're like, in a new place struggling to make friends is try to set up a regular event that's centered around an activity it could be a card game it could be like a bi-weekly dinner kind of thing and then you can sort of build a reputation around being the person that's a hub of activity and then from that you'll often like find more people want to hang out with you because a you're

offering something and b you you become a person that like is a active community member and i don't think you necessarily need a tech startup for that. Find a game you like. But the thing that I think is interesting is you're cynical about private enterprise being able to create this, Mary. Why are you so cynical about it? I know you've checked out a lot of these businesses. I don't think she's cynical. I hear some questioning there. She said, I am cynical, Austin. What are you saying? I don't think she meant it. I think we're just to the right of being cynical here, but maybe we are there. Are you cynical, Mary?

I think you're right. I'm skeptical. Maybe that's the better word. I'm skeptical a lot of these because I think, while I think the internet in particular has certainly been the basis for, it can be a great way to make friends in certain capacities. I think like paying an app or an organization to give you friends. Am I about to just describe Greek life and go on a totally different path? Wait until I tell you about country clubs. Like, I don't know that that is the answer to something that the U.S. Surgeon General has referred to as an epidemic. I think there are good things to be found there, but to turn completely to tech companies to solve a problem that they in part created, that's where the cynicism actually steps in. Does that answer your question, Ricky? A little bit. A little bit. I like the last part of your answer, or I should say I like your answer.

That last part really resonated with me because it's commerce and technology that have made it easy for us to be detached from one another. So many times I remember having to stop way, way back and ask directions for places. I'm actually still a person who tries to figure out the way because my brain will go mush otherwise. But it's now so easy. You don't have to have much human interaction. There's so many ways to avoid it.

you can order in. You can use an app to get around. You don't have to go to the ticket box office anymore to buy a ticket. So do we turn to the same place that's helping to create this problem in the first place? I think that's a great question, Mary. For me, I have tried to do a few things. One is to be a little bit more the person that Ricky is describing because I tend to go down rabbit holes myself. I love nothing more than to shut myself off and explore rabbit hole. In fact, we've got a little package of carrots in the fridge at the office for Mary when she's down these rabbit holes. We have to put a little bit of orange right at the edge so when she looks up, she sees it and comes back out. But I can sympathize with that. So turning what

has developed into a weakness for myself into a strength, trying to flip it around and say, Asit, maybe you could be that guy again. I mean, there was a time in your life where you were a little bit of a hub, like try it out. I think that's great, Ricky. I'm going to steal one of Mary's thoughts, which is she's talked about volunteering. And I think this is an amazing way to form some social connections. You get a lot out of volunteering. There was a time in my life where I used to volunteer quite a bit because I had three kids in school. So I was simultaneously coaching a chess club, helping coach an intramural soccer team and a quiz bowl team. And that was just amazingly beneficial for me. Now, it meant that my social group was all middle schoolers. Still, still, the mental and physical activity of it, that feeling of accomplishment, like this is warm fuzz that you get when you're serving others versus serving yourself.

And then I think that the biggest part of it is you're thrown into a group of like-minded people who have a common cause, whatever you choose to volunteer with. And that's just like a, I wouldn't call it a slide. Mary, we've talked about slides before. I wouldn't call it a friendship slide, but it is a friendship funnel. If you want to just go a little bit further, it becomes increasingly easy to make friends and do things outside of that activity. You can screen people out a little bit. Yeah. I've, I've found, I do like a little bit of volunteering. I don't do enough, but one thing I found from that too, is there's almost something beneficial, like working from home and, you know, trying to maximize your time efficiently when you're volunteering. It's the complete opposite of that. You know, you might be bored. You might feel like your time is being wasted, but you won't feel lonely. Um, and that's ultimately, I think, I think it's ultimately a good thing getting to the business side. And this is where Mary cynicism is emerging. If you think about like broader trends, right? Like people are working

from home, people are meeting fewer people, people want to meet people. You would think those would be tremendous tailwinds for the dating app stocks, match.com, Bumble. The only one that's been doing well over the past few years is Grindr. And I wonder, Asit, if you've looked at those stocks, if you've made sense of that for these businesses that should have tremendous tailwinds. Yet, maybe it's the pressure of, you know, I don't want to pay this company in order to meet people. They're really hard to figure out. And I know they became very difficult to evaluate during the pandemic, post pandemic. But I think the loneliness factor creeps in the difficulty of getting yield out of these apps, versus let's go back to a previous example,

the yield you get out of using Google Maps, when you hop into your car, instant, you see the value proposition, you never question it, right? The yield on a dating app is hit and miss. And I was laughing thinking about, you know, the example of paying someone for like a social connection, maybe two or 300 bucks a month, because that was my reaction when dating apps first came out. I was like, that's never going to fly. And here, maybe the cynicism is creeping in a bit for me as well. Maybe we see a future in which the platonic type apps actually gain some traction and it becomes normal and commonplace for you to meet your best friends on a social app i personally don't think it's going to happen that way i personally think the pendulum the way

it's swinging in society this hunger especially in the united states where we're more spread out physically to re-engage with with other folks is going to take some of the the edge off of that market proposition if we can speak again in such cold-blooded mercenary terms but the dating apps I think they're up against, you know, some really difficult dynamics. One is that the frustration level is very high on these apps. And as my great friend and colleague, Emily Flippen, often points out, even as she, you know, has lobbied for us to recommend a few of these over the years, like, if you find your soulmate the first, you know, week or two of an app, you never need it again, right?

So what do you do there? That's actually, I thought it was sort of just a cutesy aside when I first heard it, But it turns out it does have something to do with the dynamics of retention for these businesses. So I don't see that the technology aspect is going to help much with these. And I wonder the long-term trajectory of investing in some of these businesses, if it really makes sense or if they're just like cyclical businesses. And for the listener, I put Austin on the spot with that one. You just knocked it out of the park, man. So good job with that.

anything else before we go to the final story are we good we are waiting we are so you're waiting for curious i can talk about this for forever but i think we should change it up and go to all right let's see the final story so this is this has exploded this year this has exploded over the past few years but one of the things that i've been thinking a lot about is the rise of sports gambling and its effect on young men in in particular it feels like a pandora has definitely come out of the box and i think in years from now we're gonna look back and consider a lot of the mistakes we've made which is you know there was a huge push for for sports betting legalization i have a draft kings account i i'm good at gambling responsibly on it i'm not

betting more than a you know like a like a chipotle entree i would say but what i've what i've seen is you know i'm even though i'm interacting with fewer people in my late 20s i'm seeing more people that i interact with like betting heavy on sports and i think this is one of those things that's going to be a big problem for a few reasons one is it's a dopamine rush it's a huge dopamine rush that's just been released into the world and it's available at any time for you and then secondarily it's also for a lot of people it's going to be an addiction that is tremendously easy to hide compared to something like drugs or gambling when you had to like have an offshore account or go to a casino when there were more hurdles involved. So I'm thinking like

how this changes conversations with especially parents are going to be having with kids and also just what has been released into the world where we're going to be looking back on this a few years down the road saying, will we be saying, what did we do releasing that? Yeah, Ricky, as I was kind of thinking on this before we started recording, one of the questions that kept coming up for me was like, there's a difference. There's a very clear difference, but I'm unsure of where to draw the line. So there's a difference between small stakes, poker games, or like a fantasy football league, even if there's a little bit of money involved in that. And then like the complete gamification of sports that you see with DraftKings, FanDuel, fill in the blank. And I'm

like, okay, there's a clear difference, but where is the line drawn between those two things? And when does one become, when does it become more dangerous as opposed to just like a friendly exchange. And to me, the thing that sticks out is the facelessness of DraftKings and FanDuel or whatever sports betting app you're using. And maybe this even kind of harkens back to my cynicism about like the tech companies that have, that have solved, that have presented us with a problem in trying to solve it of just, it's one thing to, to play around with your friends, to have, make a social event out of something and, and to have some stakes involved that can, that's, that's fun healthy versus to have a faceless company that doesn't know you and wants to

profit off of your potential addiction that that's terrifying to me actually so michael lewis has a podcast series about this and he's pointed out in interviews you know if you're allowed to play on these apps it's because the the companies think you're a loser basically what happens for these companies is they send you a vip host if you're betting a lot of money on there and you're losing a lot of money, but they completely limit you if you win. And that's something in Nate Silver's book that he put out this year, he talks about where he started betting on NBA games, and he noticed that he was getting limited from being able to do that. So I think part of it is, and I'll steal the Michael Lewis take, have people understand that they're playing a rigged game.

Yeah, I love that. Victor Niederhofer, who's a famous speculator, who I sometimes refer to for for inspiration, wrote a great book called The Education of a Speculator. It's about 1997. And he talks about the house always having an advantage. And Ricky, I mentioned him earlier this year when you and I had a conversation. To be able to overcome the house advantage is nearly impossible because they always find a way to change the game, to change the spread, to change the odds. So it's a sort of depressing enterprise long term for anyone who undertakes it. I should say, though, there's a benefit to sharpening your mind about risk, about payoffs, about tradeoffs, about how to manage capital, how to allocate it, that comes from these types of activities. I myself don't gamble.

I do think it's addictive. But I've played lots of poker in my life. and what you said. Yeah, I'm going to cite here, which I rarely do from, from our actual outline, Ricky called this guys playing cards together. There is something of a male bonding ritual. It's not exclusively male, but a bonding ritual from the time you're a kid and you play your first hands of pokers with your, your friends for penny stakes. I had a penny jar I used to bring to our poker games. So, you know, you merge up to maybe some chips that somebody buys and you assign of value to those, or sometimes it's like dollar stakes. That kind of socializing, I think,

is carried on by men's groups through decades, those who are able to do this responsibly. So there's a lot to like about the activity when it's social, when you're together with other people. But I agree with Mary, it becomes sort of scary in the context that you're pointing it out, Ricky. This is the theme of what we've been talking about today. Technology makes it easy. commerce makes it easy for you to do this the psychology of the app makes it easy for you to this that we should say the engineering of the app so that whole branch is scary to me but i'm here today to endorse men and women getting together for some low stakes poker and enjoying an evening together just as they do lots of other card games across the globe i'll co-sign that as well

asset. I think it's a good way to limit yourself, make sure you're not doing anything financially harmful. But if you're doing it with friends, it's a good way to learn how to play fairly with each other. And I think something we lose in adulthood is we play fewer games with other people. Let's leave it there. We'll be back on the 27th. Appreciate you all being here. If you stuck through the remainder of this episode, I'll also plug that if you find value in the show, if you like listening to Motley Fool Money, please leave a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts. It's sort of the front porch for Motley Fool Money. And leaving a review is a good way to invite other people in, especially if you found value in listening to the show over the past year.

Asit Sharma, Mary Long, thanks for being here. Appreciate it. Thanks, Ricky. Play more games 2025. As always, people on the program may have interests in the stocks they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool editorial standards and are not approved by advertisers. The Motley Fool only picks products that it would personally recommend to friends like you. I'm Ricky Mulvey. Thanks for listening. We will be back on December 27th.