Motley Fool Money - 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

Hi everyone, I'm Charlie Cox. Join us on Disney Plus as we talk with the cast and crew of Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again. What haven't you gotten to do as Daredevil? Being the Avengers. Charlie and Vincent came to play. I get emotional when I think about it. One of the great finale of any episode we've ever done. We are going to play Truth or Daredevil.

What? Oh boy. Fantastic. You guys go hard, man. Daredevil Born Again, official podcast Tuesdays, and stream Season 2 of Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again on Disney Plus. 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 going to 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 have a little bit of a looser Motley Full Money than we normally do.

I set 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 Osset. Osset, 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 this last 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 bucks. 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 ERAs 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 ERAs 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 gotten have skyrocketed so much is because of this social media virality piece. Like you get to talk 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. 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 relieve 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 become something that takes, 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. A little bit, little bit. There's also, there's definitely a social standing.

if you have a photo of you on Instagram at the Ares 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 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. You know, like 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 like 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 Brian, Taylor Swift, I put Olivia Rodriguez 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, we're going to do an arena tour saying, we want to charge about 150 bucks 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 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 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 parissocial relationship with the star, and not an unhealthy way. I think there are 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 it. 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 Deaden 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 J.D. 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 parisocial 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, it's, I hesitated saying parisocial 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 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.

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 it 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 in a theme.

and I can sort of relive that again. That's not quite even that related to that parosocial 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're packed, you know, cheek to jail 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 jow at a concert? I need a little bit of space. I don't know what you're doing. We talked 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, a couple of things that stand out to me.

One is that, Mary, when I look at J.D. 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 folks 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 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 us, it's original question, and 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 8, the ability to completely figure out the market for what something's going to cost. A front row seat is now premium. You know, we can make seats even in the balcony, in the rafters of an arrangement. premium if we see that it's selling out due to dynamic pricing. And I think that's 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 us it, 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, 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 we work in Denver. And I see postings there all the time about, hey, find your community. Let's build our community. And I, again, I appreciate those efforts on one hand, but I also think that

they're tapping into something that's, that that search for community seems so, 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, like, 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, well, I think it's fascinating that so many businesses are trying to

address this problem. I don't know that the answer is actually best solved by a business plan. I think it's solved by something else. So I was going to kick this. you guys, not only just for your thoughts, but how, I know both of you are interested in cultivating community and being engaged in a number of different ways. 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 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 biweekly.

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 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 interested is you're cynical about private enterprise being able to create this, Mary. Why are you so cynical about it? You've, you've tried. I know, checked out a lot of these businesses. I don't think she's cynical. I hear I hear some questioning there, but she said I am cynical. What are you saying? I don't think she meant. I think we're just to the

right of being cynical here, but maybe maybe we are there. Are you cynical, Mary? I think you're right. I'm I'm, I'm skeptical. Maybe that's the better, the better word. I'm skeptical a lot of these because I think I while I think the internet in particular, it 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 brand? 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. 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 it 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 a 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 like orange right at the edge. So when she looks up, she sees it and comes back out. but I can sympathize with that. So like turning what has developed into a weakness for myself into a strength, trying to flip it around and say, I said, 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 you get when you're serving others versus serving yourself. And then I think 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 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. 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, Asset, 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 three hundred bucks a month, because that was my real thing. 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 other folks is going to take some of 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 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 has lobbied for 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, you know? And for the listener, I put Austin on the spot with that one. And 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 me. I can talk about this for forever, but I think we should change it up and go to Rick and see the final story. So this is 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 particular. It feels like a Pandora has definitely come out of the box. And I think in years from now we're going to look back and consider a lot of the mistakes we've made, which is, you know, there was a huge push for sports betting legalization. I have a draft king's account. I'm good at gambling responsibly on it. I'm not betting more than a, you know, like a, like a, like a,

Chipotle entree, I would say. But what I've seen is, you know, I'm even though I'm interacting with fewer people in my late 20s here, 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 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 Draft Kings, Fandul Fill in the Blank. And I'm like, okay, there's a clear difference, but where is that? 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 draft kings and Fanduil 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 solved, that have presented us with a problem in trying to solve it. It's one thing to to play around with your friends, to have, make a social event out of something and to have some stakes involved, 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'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 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 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 our actual outline And 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 friends for penny stakes. I had a penny jar I used to bring to our poker games.

So you merge up to maybe some chips that somebody buys and you assign a 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 do this. 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, Austin.

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. 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 suck through the remainder of this episode, I'll also plug that if you find value in the show,

if you like listening to Motley Full Money, please leave a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts. It's sort of the front porch for Motley Full 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. Austin Trauma, 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 ourselves stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Full editorial standards, and they're not approved by advertisers. The Motley Full 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.