Motley Fool Money - Sports Business, Virtual Currency, Buffett’s Latest Buy

Episode Date: April 8, 2022

The topic of inflation has focused on the Federal Reserve’s response, but how are companies responding? (0:30) Emily Flippen and Maria Gallagher analyze Walmart’s aggressive push to hire more full-time truckers, as well as: - Meta Platforms working on a currency for the metaverse - Twitter’s incoming director: Elon Musk - Berkshire-Hathaway’s new stake in HP - Rite Aid’s tenuous future - Coca-Cola’s latest flavor innovations (19:00) John Ourand from the Sports Business Journal discusses Tiger Woods’ impact on The Masters’ ratings, Apple and Amazon striking deals with Major League Baseball, and why ESPN has one of the best TV deals for live sports. (33:30) Maria and Emily recommend three books (The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson, The Art of Statistics: How to Learn from Data by David Spiegelhalter, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail by Ray Dalio) and share two stocks on their radar: Airbnb and Etsy. Got a question about stocks?  Call our voicemail: 703-254-1445 Stocks discussed: WMT, COST, AMZN, TGT, FB, TWTR, TSLA, BRK, HP, BBY, RAD, KO, T, PARA, AAPL, CMCSA, AMZN, DIS, ABNB, ETSY Host: Chris Hill Guests: Emily Flippen, Maria Gallagher, John Ourand Engineers: Steve Broido, Rick Engdahl Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you're a small business owner, you already know what it takes to keep everything moving. You're juggling customers, invoices, and about 100 decisions every day. Thankfully, taxes don't have to be one more thing on that list. With Intuit TurboTax, you can get your business taxes done for you with a full service expert. TurboTax matches you with your dedicated tax expert. Who knows your industry understands your business write-offs and gives you the personalized advice your business deserves. upload your documents right in the app, hand everything off, and still feel like you're in the loop the whole way through. You can even get real-time updates on your expert's progress right in the app, which makes it so much easier to stay on track.

And you can get unlimited expert help at no extra cost, even on nights and weekends during tax season. Visit turbotax.com to get matched with an expert today, only available with TurboTax full-service experts. The business of sports is changing, and so is America's labor force. We'll take a closer look at both and a lot more. Motley Fool Money starts now. Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money. From Fool Global Headquarters, this is Motley Fool Money.

It's the Motley Full Money Radio Show. I'm Chris Hill, and I'm joined by Motley Fool Senior analyst Emily Flippen and Maria Gallagher. Good to see you both. Nice to see you, Chris. We got the latest headlines from Wall Street. Oran, from the Sports Business Journal is our guest. And as always, we get a couple of stocks on our radar. But we begin with inflation. So much of the media conversation around inflation has centered on the Federal Reserve's response. But this week, investors got a glimpse into how

America's largest private employer is responding. Walmart is increasing hourly pay for part-time and full-time employees at some of their stores. And nationally, Walmart will pay truck drivers a starting annual salary of between $95 and $110,000. That is up to 26% higher than the previous average salary. Emily, let's start here. How should investors feel about Walmart's labor costs going up? Well, not all costs are made equal. And I think this is an example of a business investing in the right place right now.

So I think investors should feel good about this move. Now, admittedly, you could argue that this is reactive. I mean, we see in unionization at other large American employers. And with the challenges of supply chains, freight costs, labor shortages, Walmart may have just been forced into action. But still, there are employers out there who, despite facing these similar headwinds, are opting to do nothing. And in this type of environment, I don't think that shapes up well for the long term. And with Walmart specifically, I think this is giving them, you know, giving up some margin for them. But it's able to ensure a more productive and, if efficient business for the long term. So I do applaud that move. But as you mentioned, Chris, on the side of the Federal Reserve, there's been a lot of conversation around how the Fed has just really failed to manage inflation. And it's a bit of a natural life cycle I see happening between the Fed and Walmart here. Inflation is high because the economy's been relatively strong. We have years of COVID-induced quantitative easing. But the supply hasn't managed to keep up. And as

such, employers are forced to raise prices, forced to rage wages, which keeps their stock prices down. It decreases household wealth and theoretically decreases demand back to the level where it matches supply. And that's all economic theory. And you know how much I hate economic theory. But it is all to say that this is a shorter term decrease in Walmart stock price due to investing in labor. It's not a bad thing for Walmart. It's not a bad thing for workers, investors, or the economy. You know, in terms of prices going up, Maria, shares of Costco hit a new high this week. they had strong sales for the month of March. Costs are going up, but consumers are still spending. Yeah, absolutely. We saw comparable sales up 19.1% in the U.S., 15.7% in Canada, 8.4% in other places

internationally. So overall, we had those comp sales up about 17.2% last month. If you look at things like Bank of America's credit card spending reports, retail is actually doing well, which is kind of defying that pessimism people have been warning about with retail spending, especially as we're heading into tax refunds season where we're already seeing higher tax refunds that we did a year or two ago. I think that it's a really good news for an environment where people have been pretty stressed about consumer spending habits. Emily, let's go back to Walmart for a second because you think about CEO Doug McMillan and his team, they have to have run the numbers on these pay increases. And when you think about supply chain challenges that Walmart, as much as anyone, is

dealing with, it seems like they are making the right investment, whether they feel forced to or not. Again, this is the largest employer in America for a private business. It's certainly the largest retail employer. Do you think this sets the tone for other major retailers like Amazon and Target, and we'll throw Costco in there as well, to sort of look at what they're doing with their employee base and look to sort of secure employees so that they're dealing with less turnover. If those businesses haven't already gotten the message, I think this is a sign from Walmart that they probably should catch up with the Times. And it's easy to point at a salary of more than $100,000, right, twice the national average coming from a blue collar job and say,

oh, that's ridiculous. And that's what the headlines today want you to believe. But when push comes to shove, we're talking about massive challenge. and freight right now. A lot of people not wanting, not willing to work and trucking, an extremely challenging job. And Walmart saying, we need these. These are essential employers for our business and we're going to pay them what they're worth. Three years ago, meta platforms tried to launch a cryptocurrency that ultimately failed. Now the Financial Times is reporting the company formerly known as Facebook is working on a new virtual currency that would be used in the Metaverse. The staff is reportedly referring to the currency as Zuckbucks

after CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Maria, people can make whatever jokes they want. I'm sure they will. But this does seem like a necessary building block for the Metaverse if this company is going to make it work. Exactly. So what we're watching really in real time is meta trying to remain this dominant player, innovate where they think the world is going to be in the next five years,

pivoting away from just social media into that metaverse. So like you said, this digital token, which is being called Zuckbucks, it's not going to be crypto the way we saw them with Libra, which was turned to dime, which just turned to nothing. This is going to be more like digital cash you see in video games, such as Roblox, Fortnite. So really leaning into that metaverse style, they're trying to build out that ecosystem with their VR and their AR capabilities. They're talking about making this environment something you're entering and spending time. And so really making it all incumbents thing. But what's important to note that it's actually also really in development.

So shares of Facebook are still down about 30% since spending for these new innovations caused profits to fall last quarter. They have weaker revenue expectations for the rest of this year and this quarter due to increased competition with TikTok. So you can see they're trying to pivot away from social media. So they're not directly competing in the way that they once were. They have enough money and resources to do these types of experiments, but they're really betting on this being what the next five, 10 years looks like. And they're really trying to lean into that. So one of the things we've seen with Apple and Google and their app stores is those companies sort of pushing the envelope in a way in terms of the cut that they take and regulators looking

into that and sort of the push and pull that goes between developers and those mega tech companies. Do you think part of the conversation at meta platforms is, hey, how do we do this virtual currency in such a way that we can control it, it's profitable, but we're not ruffling so many feathers that regulators are giving us a hard time about this. Yeah, I would bet that that's a big conversation. So what's pretty interesting is in 2009, they had in-app purchases in games like Farmville, right? And so they actually shut down that service about four years after that because of the growth in international made it really unwieldy from conversion rates. And so I think that's kind of an interesting challenge that they probably learned.

from the last time. So they're trying to probably do it again, do it in, like you said, a more profitable way. Now they have all of these other elements of their ecosystem. I don't know what that's going to look like with Instagram, what it's going to look like with all of their other elements. But I'm sure that they're trying to build it out so it can be scaled profitably. But like you pointed out, not really poking anybody, making anybody upset, getting the Federal Reserve involved. Shares of Twitter rose nearly 20% this week on the news that Elon Musk has taken a 9% stake in the company and will join the board of directors. Must said that he is looking forward to making significant improvements to Twitter in the

coming months. Emily, as a longtime Twitter user myself, I look forward to improvements on the platform. What stands out to you about this story? Lost in all this is that he's running Tesla, but is spending a lot of time presumably with Twitter. What stands out to you? Well, if I was a Tesla shareholder. I'm not sure if I'd say that I was very excited by this news, but if I was a Twitter shareholder, I'd be intrigued, which is to say there are really two parts to this story. There's a conversation around Elon Musk, and there's a conversation around Twitter. So let's start with the Twitter part first, because I actually think that's the most interesting and the most relevant part of this story. I mean, part of the reason I think shareholders for Twitter were excited to hear this

news is because shareholders have been pushing for change for a while. There is this belief that Twitter was going to reinvent its platform into something that engaged consumers more readily and monetized them more effectively. And they've been an undermonetized, an underutilized platform, with exceptions of yourself, Chris, of course. But still, they've had these new ventures that they've pushed into that have really just fallen flat on their face. Meanwhile, other social media platforms have been gaining steam and gaining traction. So there's a belief that any type of change is good change for this business. And on the second part of that equation, there's a Musk, and this is really where it gets controversial. I think there's a belief that Musk can bring

about need a change. I think as long as he doesn't introduce Musk bucks, it's probably going to be a good thing. But I will say this, regardless of where you feel about Musk, don't underestimate the attention that will be brought to the business by retail investors and by fans of Elon Musk. I think it's silly to underestimate the power that that has, whether it's logical or not. Warren Buffett made a new investment that's virtually unprecedented, and Coca-Cola has a new flavor that's just virtual. Details after the break. You're listening to Motley Full Money.

First time for everything, my ear still rang. Chug-lug-lug, chug-lug. Welcome back to Motley Full Money. Chris Hill here with Maria Gallagher and Emily Flipping. In 1998, Warren Buffett said he would never own a computer stock like HP. And this week, we learned that Buffett's definition of the word never only extends to a period of 24 years because Berkshire Hathaway revealed in a filing, it bought 121 million shares of HP. Maria, I guess it's nice to see that Buffett is not stuck in his ways at his age.

Yeah, I think it's interesting, right? So I think there are two different things to talk about. The first is just kind of the strength of Warren Buffett after this was announced shares of HP were up 15%. HP is now the second biggest tech holding after Apple in this Berkshire portfolio. It's a little bit more along the lines of what they've done in the past. I know not technically a computer company is what he's known for, but slower growing kind of a legacy play. Some other companies that Berkshire owns or has taken that you might not know about is

Fruit of the Loom, Brooks running, Business Wire, Benjamin Moore. I just think it's important to kind of underscore how prolific and powerful Buffett still is in this investing landscape and how it just makes sense that he's going to expand. I do think it's good that he's changed his mind and is going back into computers. The second kind of interesting thing from me, from an investing standpoint, is it's just saying about this market. So HP last quarter had revenue up 8.7 percent, showed key growth in gaming, in peripherals, things like headsets. And I think it just shows the connected electronic environment we're operating in and even moving more towards when we have this hybrid work environment, you want your computer to work at home, you want it to connect to your

homework screen, to your work work screen, to your laptop, to your phone, all of these kind of interconnectedness. And so that's going to increase the type of consistent repurchasing activity since we're wearing out faster, things out faster because we're using them all the time. So I think it's a smart call from Buffett. I think it's an interesting choice with HP. And I think it'll be fascinating to kind of see how these habits and electronics continue to evolve. So how big do you think the ripple effects are from something like this? Because Corey Barry, who's the CEO at Best Buy, took this as an opportunity, took this news as an opportunity to say, Buffett's thinking supports her view that people are going to want to upgrade their technology.

She runs an electronics and tech retail business, so I don't blame her for talking. her own book. But do you think she's right? I think so, yeah, because I think you see these upgrade cycle shortening for consumers in these areas like computing home theater. Everyone has the next thing. I think there's the social pressure to always have the next big thing. The kind of built-in obsolescence you see with phones they get worse and worse over time. The time period is getting shorter. You see all this increased competition. I think that we're all going to continue to upgrade our technology at a faster pace because we're just using it all the time. So it's just wearing out faster and faster. And so I think it's a good bet to think that that trend is going to

continue. In the consumer drugstore industry, Rite Aid has struggled against competitors like CVS and Walgreens. But things got even worse this week when an analyst from Deutsche Bank downgraded the company and gave shares of Rite Aid a price target of $1. Emily, I'm not saying it's incorrect to think that Rite Aid might go under, but a $1 price target? I mean, that's just mean. Yeah, somebody woke up this morning and thought they'd take a couple punches at the underdog, while the underdog is not only out, but, you know, lying bloody on the floor outside the ring. I mean, poor Rite Aid by this point. However, I will say this may be a bit justified, right?

Rite Aid has just struggled. And the executive turnover in particular has been a hard spot for this business. They actually got rid of the chief operating officer role entirely after losing their chief operating officer. I mean, they're really just treading water by this point, but I think it's worth pointing out is the financial position of this business, right? A $1 price target sounds like you are essentially valuing the company close to nothing, but that's really not the case. That $1 price target is more than $18 over the tangible book value per share of this business. So it can go lower than $1 of that price target wanted to be $0.00 it could have been. And this

is a business that has more than $6 billion in debt. If their financial position continues, right? If the COVID tailwinds continue, they will be able to make their debt payments. If there's a massive fall off from vaccinations, from revenue from other COVID-related streams, there could be a situation in which they're not able to make those debt payments and they're put in a tough spot. It's pretty staggering to think that they have billions of dollars in debt when the market cap for this business is about $400 million. I mean, this is, is a business that is one-tenth a size it was five years ago. Do you think Rite Aid is still a standalone company in two years? Does someone buy them for the real estate? Or are they just

sort of left to fend for themselves? And nearly $3 billion, or that $6 billion in debt are leases on top of that. So this is a business that I think is struggling. Now, they do report earnings on the 14th. So I think we'll have more clarity in a few days about what that financial situation looks like. But to answer your question, Chris, I would be surprised if this company was still a standalone company in two years' time. We love when consumer food and beverage companies introduce limited edition products, but Coca-Cola is starting to push the envelope for what actually makes sense. Last month, it was the introduction of Coca-Cola Starlight, a red version of the soda that the company says was, quote, inspired by space. This week, the new offering is Coca-Cola

zero sugar bite, and bite is spelled B-Y-T-E, Coca-Cola zero sugar bite, a new flavor that the company says is supposed to taste like pixels, said one executive, quote, Coca-Cola zero sugar bite makes the intangible taste of the pixel tangible. Maria, I have no idea what that means, and yet I think I might want to try this. You're not alone. So I, I mean, I love a good marketing campaign. I think Coke has proven time and again that they're good at it. I think we all remember the June 2010 share a Coke campaign in Australia. They estimated it raised Coke share of the category by 4%. It increased consumption by young adults, 7% from that campaign alone. So this new addition, I think, as they're trying to, like you said, make the intangible taste tangible, another description that I saw was the bright

elements up front with refreshing finish. And again, I don't really know what that means, but I am excited. I am intrigued. And so what they're doing is they had to, they're trying to appeal to gamers. So it appeared first on an island in Fortnite called Pixel Point where players could play mini games there, including a game that takes place in a mini glass Coke bottle. So they're trying to really appeal to the gamers. And they're not the only ones who are doing that Red Bull, Monster, Pepsi. They're all really appealing to this kind of gaming environment.

So I think it's really interesting. I think it's kind of fun. I think it really just gets people talking, gets people into. intrigued. The flavor is actually only going to be available in a two pack in the U.S., which will cost $15 plus shipping. So they're marking it up, they're building intrigue, and I respect them, and I might try it. Emily, do you think that was part of the pitch from the department head? Look, we're going to do this flavor, and whether it works or not, we're going to charge so much, it's going to be profitable. Well, it's the only way this makes sense, because I tell you what,

Coke. You are not a beer. You don't get a nice, light, refreshing finish. You're not Oreo. You don't get fun flavor. So if you want to try to make a quick 15 bucks off of somebody who likes to play games at Fortnite, go ahead. This is not going to be a lasting impression. Emily Flipp and Maria Gallagher, we will see you later in the show. Up next, the latest in sports business with John O'Rand. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Full Money.

We're going to kick your colloquy have posterior. Of course you realize we're speaking figuratively. Welcome back to Motley Full Money. I'm Chris Hill. Major League Baseball is underway, and so is golf's most prestigious event, the Masters. Here to talk through the business angles related to the sports world is John Oren. He covers media for the Sports Business Journal,

and he joins me now from Washington, D.C. John, thanks for being here. Anytime, Chris. Before we get to either of those, I am curious about the NCAA basketball tournament that just wrapped up. The ratings for the semifinal game between Duke and USC and for the championship game between UNC and Kansas, both seemed to indicate this was a successful tournament for Turner Sports

and its parent company AT&T. And for CBS, too, because it's a partnership, and the games were across CBS, Turner, TNT, and True TV. And so from a business sense, it already was, a successful tournament even before the first tip because the ad sales had sold out. And so everybody was sort of waiting to see what was going to happen on the court. And if you could script, if you're a television executive and you can script a tournament, you would have scripted this tournament. You had a lot of upsets in the first couple of rounds. You had St. Peters, which was a wonderful

story sort of going through into the late rounds. And in the end, for the final four, you had four Blue Blood Schools. And so with the Final Four, you don't want necessarily one of the upstarts in there because even though it's a good storyline, it doesn't generate good ratings or big ratings. If you have four really well-known brands, which is what those teams are now because there are so many one-and-done players, then that's what they want. That's what they got. And even though the games, the Final Four and the championship were on cable, it still brought in the most viewers in many, many years. Let's shift to golf, and there was a time when Tiger Woods being on the leaderboard in a golf tournament

meant an automatic boost in TV ratings on Saturday and Sunday. You and I are talking on Thursday afternoon where Tiger Woods is in the midst of his round, so I apologize for pulling you away from that. At his, in terms of golf, he's at an advanced age of 46 years old. but is he still the number one draw that moves the needle for television ratings? Chris, if I start twitching, it's only because I got to get my tiger habit going. Tiger Woods is still and forever will be the number one draw for television by far. If he is playing this weekend and is on the leaderboard, CBS, which is going to carry it this weekend, ESPN has it on Thursday and Friday,

is going to see a huge increase in ratings. And I've been writing this story for probably two decades. What is a tour going to do when Tiger leaves? Everybody's sort of waiting for Tiger Woods to leave. And what the tour has been trying to do and what CBS and NBC and ESPN, which are the networks that own the golf rights have been trying to do, is really build up a younger group of golfers that are taking over. And I think that you might have it.

They're no longer young. They're sort of middle age by golf standards. But, you know, Jordan Spee, Dustin Johnson, Bryson Deschambeau has turned into a player that personally, I have to watch every single shot that he makes. It's almost like the perfect villain. So many people either love him or hate him out there. And so they're trying to do that.

I think the golf is set, okay, but it certainly is going to come down from Tiger. That's just kind of a once-in-a-generation kind of talent as far as in terms of media and television. When we talked back in January, you said on this show, you were skeptical that Major League Baseball owners and players would reach an agreement to start the season on time. I was right there with you because there is so much historic animosity between these two groups. And yet here we are in early April. Before we get into some of the streaming services that are involved now, let's start with the fact that the season is happening, basically on time.

How surprised are you that this happened? And was there just too much TV money on the table for these two sides to walk away? I'm not sure if it's TV money. I think there was just so much revenue on the table for either side to walk away. I couldn't be more surprised because I think what we correctly saw was it's not even a level of animosity. Because in these types of disputes, you always have a certain level of animosity. One side, you know, the management wants one thing and the players won another thing. What I saw here was a level of distrust, and that's harder to get through.

You know, at beginning of last season, we're right in the middle of COVID. Nobody knew exactly whether it was going to be a full season or how to do it. And the owners came to the players with the plan. You play less and we'll pay you the same amount. And the players didn't trust the owners. They were like, no, we're going to play the same amount of games. you know, we're not going to have a short in season at the same amount of money. If they couldn't even agree on that, I didn't think they would be able to agree on the sky being

blue. And the fact that they did come to an agreement shows that there was a lot of money there, and neither one of them, neither one of those two sides really wanted to play chicken. Apple Plus has its first live sports deal. Apple Plus is going to be streaming baseball games on Friday nights. Major League Baseball is reportedly getting more than $100 million in revenue from deals that they have struck with Apple and with Peacock, I believe. What does this do for the landscape? Because among other things, Major League Baseball is, it is a national pastime. And yet, from a viewing standpoint, it is very much a local and regional sport, which means that if Apple Plus is streaming these,

games exclusively on Friday nights, they're going to be some local fans upset that the only way they can watch their team is if they get Apple Plus and not everybody does. I live in the DC market where the nationals are getting ready to start the season against the Mets on Thursday, but it's raining outside and it looks like that game is going to be canceled. And so the opening day game for the Mets in New York and for the nationals in D.C. is going to be on Apple TV Plus. There are going to be a lot of really upset, confused people trying to figure out what to do. I applaud baseball, actually. I know this isn't a fan-friendly deal by any means.

But what's one of the biggest complaints you always hear about baseball? all is just how old it is, you know, that the average age of the fan is the type of fan that has a cable TV subscription is going to sit in front of the RSN and watch it. They want to get fans like my son who is a recent college graduate and will never subscribe to cable, but he will possibly stream, you know, a couple of Apple TV games for a couple of months and then, you know, go to another streaming service. And so this is really designed to get younger fans who are what they call cord never is in the business. They're never going to subscribe to cable. And so, you know, or cord cutters who have decided that cable costs too much and they just want to stream different

games. And what they're trying to do is trying to widen the pot. So they have deals with Apple TV Plus. They have deals with Peacock, like you mentioned. And the ratings, the viewership is going to be down considerably. They're going to be minuscule. But they're just trying to widen the pie and bring more people under the tent. And I get that not everybody is a sports fan.

not everybody's a baseball fan, football, whatever, but there are people who just aren't interested in sports. But from a business standpoint, nothing moves the needle like live sports. I mean, overwhelmingly, the safest bet in television ratings is that the most popular thing in a given year is going to be the Super Bowl. Right. And we just came out with a list of the top 50 television shows through the first three months of the year, 47 of them were live events, live sports. And what I think is interesting about what you said is that applies to television. And there's a big question about whether it applies to streaming. Does an Apple TV subscriber really want to watch live sports, or do they just like

this video on demand library where they can come in and they can binge watch any show? That, that to me, is still an open question. And what you're seeing Apple do and what you're seeing Amazon do as well is really test to see whether or not live sports can do for their streaming services what they did for cable and broadcast television. I'm glad you mentioned Amazon because Amazon Prime Video is going to be the home on Friday nights of New York Yankees baseball games. And when you talk about fans getting upset, I think every fan base likes to think they're the most passionate, but we're going to find out pretty quickly what Amazon Prime Video is customer service is dealing with in terms of angry New York Yankee fans who don't have Amazon Prime

video. You know, Chris, I've been covering this. I write for Sports Business Journal. So this is like right in my alley. And what I tell baseball fans is welcome to the club. If you have any soccer fans in your life, they've been complaining about this forever because they have to, they have to subscribe to Paramount Plus, Peacock, ESPN Plus, K.m. Plus. cable broadcasts. They're like a dozen different streaming services out there if they want to see all of their games. If you're a tennis fan and you wanted to see all of the Australian Open, you had to go and subscribe to ESPN Plus or the tennis channel had a streaming service.

Hockey. Hockey fans are dealing with that right now. They have to subscribe to cable to get ESPN and Turner. They have to subscribe to ESPN Plus. They have to subscribe to Bleacher Report. And now it's down. And now it's baseball's fans turns. And so that customer service rep from Amazon, they're already used to hearing these complaints.

Last thing. And then I'll let you go. Thanks, because Tiger's about to finish. A lot of times when we talk about deals for, whether it's Major League Baseball, the NFL, we're talking about enormous piles of money. You said recently one of the best TV deals when it came to the rights of live sports. is ESPN's deal with the NCAA. As a Disney shareholder, I feel like I should have a better grasp of what is this deal that they have and what makes it such a good deal for ESPN?

Well, you know, we started talking about the NCAA men's basketball tournament. ESPN carried the NCAA women's basketball tournament as well. And that set viewership records that ESPN hasn't seen in two decades. and ESPN has overseen this wild growth of women's college basketball. And what ESPN did is, you know, about a decade ago, it bought a package from the NCAA that included women's basketball. It included the college world series and the softball as well. But it also included, you know, swimming and diving.

It included certain sports that, you know, certainly have a passionate fan base, but don't bring in big television ratings. And so that big bucket of sports ESPN is paying less than $40 million, which is something I think you and I might be able to afford. It is in terms of media deals, sports media deals, it is one of the cheapest ones out there, especially given the ratings that we just saw in the women's tournament. This deal for ESPN runs another two years. In two years, you can bet a pretty good amount of money. They're going to carve out the women's tournament and put that out to market to create a bidding war and then try to sell those other 22 NCAA sports like lacrosse and hockey and everything in

between. You can read them in the Sports Business Journal and you can hear them every week on the sports media podcast with Andrew Marshaun of the New York Post. John Orrin. Thanks for being here. Go enjoy the golf. Hey, thanks, Chris. Anytime, man.

Coming up after the break, Emily Flipping. and Maria Gallagher returned, they got a couple of stocks on their radar. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. As always, people on the program may have interest 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're here. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Chris Hill here, once again with Maria Gallagher and Emily Flippin. We love getting questions from you, our dozens of listeners. You send them in email. You include them when you post reviews on Apple and Spotify, and we love that. But we wanted to let you know there is now another way

you can hit us with a question by calling us. You can call the Motley Full Money hotline at 703-254-1445. Leave us a question about a stock industry or trend, and we may use your voice in an upcoming episode. That number again, 703-254-1445. Give us a call. April is Financial Literacy Month. Before we get to the stocks on our radar. Maria, what is a book you would recommend for folks who want to increase their business or investing acumen? So I have two books. They're kind of the two of my favorite elements of being an analyst. The first is I think it's really important to understand history and the context of the world we live in. So the first I would recommend is the assent of money by Nile Ferguson. It's this in-depth history of how money existed from ancient times in Mesopotamia and

math and it's really, really interesting and really fun. And then the second I think that I love about being an analyst I think is really important is kind of understanding numbers and a way to think about numbers critically. And so that book I have a recommendation is called The Art of Statistics Learning from Data by David Spiegelhalter. It's kind of a statistics and probability textbook, but it's super fun. It's really interesting. And I think it really made me start questioning numbers in a really fascinating way that I think really helps when you're trying to look at companies. A fun book about statistics? It exists, I promise.

Emily Flippin, what about you? I'm looking at the principles for dealing with the Changing World Order by Ray Dalio. And part of the reason why I'm calling out this book in particular is because there's also, I think it's a 45, 50 minute long video on YouTube from Dalio, which basically summarizes the book in a way that I think is very approachable and is very agreeable. for investors like myself who much prefer to consume content in media form. But there's also a book, obviously, out there. And essentially what Dahlio is doing is looking back through the history of financial markets and in particular how countries have handled them. And as one rises, right,

and what causes the eventual fall and how that repeats throughout time, in particular, talking about some of the dynamics that are leading the U.S. to presumably fall off in terms of leading the world order, the rise of China. And I really hate economics, as I think I've said on this podcast every time I've been on it. But it's very approachable, very simple and more enjoyable, I think, for a person to understand an investor to understand to incorporate some elements of, I guess, macro-based thoughts into their business-focused investing process. All right. We will include those titles in the show notes of this episode. Let's get to the stocks on our radar. Our man behind the glass, Steve Broido is going to hit you with a question.

Maria, you're up first. What are you looking at this week? So the stock on my radar this week is Airbnb, ticker symbol ABMB. So in 2021, it had a strong 2021. Their gross booking value was up 96% up to nearly 50 billion. It's above pre-COVID levels. What's really interesting is at the end of January this year, they saw 25% more summer bookings were already in place than in 2019. They're seeing a growth in long-term stays, non-urban bookings. So I'm really just looking to dive into it a little bit more as people start thinking about their summer vacations in the next couple of years. So I'm excited about that company.

Steve, question about Airbnb. Does Airbnb need to consolidate the total amount of money it costs to book an Airbnb into one number? Because right now you go online, you're like, this cabin looks great. It's $120 a night. And then you're like, whoa, $80 cleaning fee, $200 booking fee, reservation fee. This is going to be $800. $800. I thought, did they just need to make it? It's $800 a night, take it or leave it? In my opinion, yes. I think that's the worst thing is when you think it's going to be one thing. It turns out it's something else.

But I think they're trying to get you with the low price. And then by the time you realize how expensive it is, you're already kind of committed. Well, it's not working for me. As a consumer, I would like it. I'd like just one number. Emily Flippin, what are you looking at this week? Oh, I'm looking at one that nobody has ever heard about before. It's Etsy, the tickers, E-T-S-Y, and I'm looking at Etsy because it's down nearly 50% just over the course of this year alone. They're in the process of rising their fees from 5% to 6.5% and it's interesting to me from evaluation perspective now, right, because it's trading at less than 25 times forward earnings. The cheapest Etsy's been in a very long time for a very high-quality, fast-growing business.

But at the same time, we're seeing this pushback from sellers about the fee hike. And next week, they're headed into a week-long strike. So it's on my radar because I like it from evaluation perspective. I'm interested in it to see how the seller strike will impact the business. Steve, question about Etsy? So when I think about Etsy, I think about custom-made items. Does Etsy sell things that just any other store would sell, like paper towels or soap, like Clorox soap?

Clorox soap, no, but you will find what some sellers argue are mass-produced goods on the platform and the business has tried to crack down on getting rid of those, but not to the satisfaction of many consumers and sellers. What do you want to add to your watch list, Steve? Hmm. I'm not really down with the Airbnb fee thing, so I think I'm going to have to go with Etsy. Emily Flipp and Maria Gallagher, thanks so much for being here.

Thanks for having us. That's going to do it for this week's Motleyful Money Radio Show. The show is mixed by Steve Broido. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening. Give us a call, 703, 254, 1445. We'll see you next time.