The Best One Yet - “Big Papi goes public” - Red Sox’s potential SPAC. Twilio’s gold shovel. Fashion’s QVC-ification.

Episode Date: October 13, 2020

The Red Sox might bouncing back from missing the playoffs by transforming into a publicly-traded stock. Twilio stock jumped 8% yesterday — you probably use it everyday but don’t know it. And fashion brands are pulling a QVC to fix the 2 biggest issues with online shopping.$TWLO $PVH $RBACGot a SnackFact? Tweet it @RobinhoodSnacks @TBOYJack @NickOfNewYorkWant a shoutout on the pod? Fill out this form:https://forms.gle/KhUAo31xmkSdeynD9Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. And this is Snacks Daily. It is Tuesday, October 13th. Happy T-Boy Tuesday, Nick. Yep, this is the best one, yeah. Jack, this is way better than what we did yesterday and Stocks Jump. First story, Jack, what do we got?

Red Sox Nation is the first fan base to form an identity around hating another team. Now the anti-Yankees are reportedly planning, you know, to go public. This is a big one. For a second story, when your Uber driver calls you to say that they've arrived, they're actually using Twilio. They're also probably five minutes away from where you are. That's a $50 billion shovel provider to the app Gold Rush. For our third and final story, Snackers, in third grade, you'll probably stay home sick once or twice, and you might have watched QVC on television.

Yes, now fashion brands, Jack, are QVCing themselves. The old DIY QVC. Jack, you know, I once had a dream the hamburger was eating me. But Snackers, happy T-Boy Tuesday. It's not just any T-Boy Tuesday today. No, no, no, no, no. For our Scandinavian snackers, this is the worst one yet. That's right. It's the National Day of Failure over in Finland. Jack and I got tipped off to this by legendary snacker Lloyd Bratman in Philadelphia.

He's been celebrating every year. The Finns are celebrating an entire day devoted to making mistakes, messing up. Classic, if you make a mistake today, you've got carte blanche, an excuse card, just say was Finland's National Day of Failure. Sorry for spilling my hot coffee all over you, Debbie, but after all, it is National Day of Failure. I'm sure that I'll work out well. And I know someone who can sell put them things on your thigh when you get things on your thigh. This is a nice thing. In Finland, business leaders and celebrities, they're speaking up and going public about times that they've effed up in life. So Jack and I jumped in Snacksdale. Notice it's like the full realm of Finnish business celebrities they got over here. An executive at Nokia. Yep. The creator of Angry Birds, the popular mobile. Classic.

The head coach of the national ice hockey team who's like A number one over there. The pantheon of business wisdom in the country of Finland have all announced their past failures on this day, October 13th. Now, the idea here is they're encouraging you to try something out because failing is okay and eventually you'll get better. Maybe you try torching that caramelized souffle yourself on the stove. Or asking someone out on their first Zoom date, even if you're 99% sure they're going to reject it. Oh, round up to 100%. But Jack and I have got to announce we've got our own failures today. Jack, you want to kick things off?

Made Alex breakfast today. flipped an omelet, it broke into a yokey, spinachy, cheddar cheesy mess. Not a mistake, that's delicious. But tried making a hands-free phone call to Mom through Siri Jack. You end up cursing Siri instead. Phone call. Mom. Mobile. No. Mobile.

No. Matthew. Not Matthew. Calling Matthew. Not Matthew. Let's hit our three stories. You're tuned in the snacks daily. We spoke to the lawyers and we got to get something legal out the way. It snacks about the hair ain't food. It's air candy. They don't reflect the views of the rob of her family.

informational just so you know we're not recommending any securities nope it's not a research report or investment advice not an offer or sale of a security right snacks is digestible business news for you robberhood financial LLC member fenra slash sipc for our first story the boston redsocks just had their worst season in years so they're reportedly trying it out in finance to become the first american baseball team to ip out honestly it beats the miners but tickers symbol, Jack? What are we thinking of her? Sox? A lot of ways you can spell socks. No, socks. S-A-W-K-S. Or you can go with no ma, but you can do one-A or two A's on that thing. I like the babe. Yeah. B-A-B-A-B-E to show that they're really just owning that curse that they're over it. Or Jack, maybe you're living in the South End,

you want to go a little bit more low-key, you go CT-G-O, if you know, you know. That's an Easter egg for the real monsters out there. Or how about D-B-R-A? Oh, Deborah, two pumps of hazelnut. She knows. She knows. Snackers. This story is about Fenway Sports Group, a company owned by billionaire John Henry. Yeah, not too shabby also owns and operates Boston Red Sox, Fenway Park, Nesson, and Liverpool Football Club, because this is a classy organization. And this story is also about Red Ball Acquisition, a publicly traded company right now, and the company has one job. Bill Buckner grabs ground balls. Red Ball acquisition acquires private companies, takes them public.

I actually don't think that sports analogy works because Bill Buckner didn't get the groundball. His National Failure Day. He knows, he knows. So Red Ball acquisition is a SPAC. It's controlled by Billy Bean, the famous Oakland Athletics GM from the movie and book Moneyball. Who also has accomplished two of our life goals. First, becoming a PFWTM, person familiar with the matter. And second, Jack, getting cast as Brad Pitt in a movie.

Not too shabby. Now, the news here is that Red Ball Acquisition Corp is going to be acquiring Fenway, which means if so facto by the transit of property, the Red Sox will become a publicly traded stock. Now, talks are still preliminary, and this could fall through. It's not official yet. But if it is, the Red Sox organization, Fenway Sports Group, will be worth $8 billion about. And ESPN's already working on like 6.30 for 36-part films on this thing.

Now, Nick, in America's four major sports, I think that's what they're called, right? We can call it that. We're going to round to that number. The NBA, the MLB, the NFL, the NHL, there are 123 teams. And they're all technically private companies with just a few real. interesting exceptions. Okay, the Green Bay Packers love to brag that they are owned by their fans. Yes. But the stock's not traded on stock markets. No, you can only give this stock as a gift like for a bar mitzv. It's a certificate that you frame and you put in your man cave in the basement. We're throwing that one on the old wedding registry ETF. The Atlanta Braves are also owned by a

much larger conglomerate that happens to own the Atlanta Braves. Yes, they are. And Madison Square Garden Sports is the stock that owns the Rangers and the Knicks down in New York. And then across the pond, you got Manchester United, which is a straight-up, like, UK-based publicly traded stock with a soccer team. Otherwise, besides those really interesting examples, 99% of sports follows this single ownership structure. You have one incredibly wealthy guy who owns the company. Jerry Jones, Dallas, Cowboys, kicks up his boots, doesn't do much else. And if not one incredibly person, you have a consortium of incredibly wealthy owners. That's the other option.

Jack, the more, the merrier, the Miami Marlins. why not get Jeter, Jordan, a private equity guy, and 13 really wealthy Floridians in a room together? But the Red Sox, this could be different. If this SPACquisition goes through, Red Sox stock could be owned by anyone who's got a brokerage account and money to invest. But here's the thing, Snackers. Sports team financials, they're shrouded in secrecy. We've never got to see the books, so to speak. But as a publicly traded company, the Red Sox would have to tell us everything. For example, they'd have to tell potential investors how much the... green paint costs to paint that giant 420 foot out there monster. Jack, did Chris Sale signing have a positive ROI?

Is the Jimmy Buffett concert bringing in more money than the John Mayer concert? I don't think so. Trick question, both more entertaining than the Red Sox. So Jack, what is the takeaway for our buddies over at the Red Sox? We have a new category of investor we got to talk about. Yes, we do. The die-hard investor. Yep, the fan investors.

Another company, by the way, with its heart also in Boston, Barstool Sports. Barstool, just like the Red Sox, has a following of diehard fans. And now Barstool is owned by Penn National Gaming, a publicly traded casino and gambling company. And lots of fans of Barstool are also becoming fans of Penn National Gaming stock. Yes, the stock of Penn Gaming is so high right now. It's like baffling stock analysts. It's tripled in 2020 Penn National Gaming has, and that doesn't seem to be fueled by fundamental

stock analysis. What a coincidence, Jack, because the loyalty of Red Sox. Sox fans also baffles most human beings as well. Yeah. So the current owner of the Red Sox organization, John Henry, he thinks that diehard fanness could also translate to Red Sox stock. If you've got a calf tattoo, you're probably going to buy the stock as well. If that happens, Nick, and the stock manages to get diehard Red Sox fans as investors, aka fan investors, then the stock of Red Sox could lift. Even if that has to do more with Big Poppy than big earnings. For our second story, Twilio just made it.

biggest acquisition ever. You don't know Twilio, but you probably used it today. Definitely, but here's the thing about Twilio Snackers. The technology behind Twilio is like, it's just, it's just really hard to explain. So the founder of Twilio has his favorite move that he likes to pull out at like dinner parties or pitches to VCs. No joke, this is like the party trick of Sand Hill Road. He actually used to do this. The guy's name is Jeff Lawson and he tells the people in the room, have you ever got a phone call from Uber when the driver is circling the block and he can't find you

so he calls you, but you never gave him your phone number. No, no, no, no, no, you didn't. And by the way, the app says that he's three minutes away. There's no way he's not at least 10 minutes away. Or have you ever logged into your Wells Fargo account? And they're like, sure, you can log in, but what four-digit number do we just text your phone?

It's always never going to be two of the same digit. It's always a little trick question over there that they're playing with you. Or when Match app pairs you with Mr. and Mrs. Rut. right. Yeah, but they don't give away the phone number. No. In case they're Mr. and Mrs. Wrong. Or you're done with Instacart and Rob's texting you from the store. He's subbing out the peach for the nectar

reen and wants to know if you're down with the baby bachoy, not the real big bachoy. Nick and I were blown away by this. Pretty much any app you use to chat with somebody else, you're chatting through Twilio. Or as Jeff Larson would say it, you see that? That's us. That's the

dinner party track. Now the core product of Twilio is anonymous and direct customer communication. Yeah, they started out with just texting. Then they expand it to email. Then they're doing phone calls. Now they're doing the whole website customer service situation. The IPOed in 2016, and now they're worth $50 billion.

Nick, translation, five lifts, five lifts. And the stock has nearly tripled this year because the pandemic is causing a sudden diversification of the customer base. Their main customers always used to be the gig apps that you're seeing because he had to connect the gig worker with you. But now Jay Crewe is using Twilio to live. live chat with customers for online shopping. Or maybe you're planning to donate to a political campaign,

so you're getting emails from them every six minutes. That's Twilio. That's probably Twilio. Or you're getting a document from a doctor about that thing on your thigh that you just checked up on. Well, that's all happening online, and Twilio's making the interaction happen. Companies that used to rely on in-person-to-in-person customer communications,

they turned to Twilio during the pandemic for distanced digital communication. Well, the company, Twilio, just splurge $3.2 billion. billion dollars, their biggest amount ever on an acquisition for a startup that helps move customer service information on you from one app to another app. And Twilio jumped 8% yesterday because they own the customer relationship arguably more than the customers than the app's due. It's a little awkward who's owning the situation here. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Twilio? For every gold miner, ask who sold them their tools. Snackers, you know the consumer facing companies who are winning today in the corona economy. Netflix stock almost doubled them.

Amazon stock almost tripled. Bilt on Stockholm's quadrupled. They all struck gold in the corona economy. But miners don't dig with their bare hands. They use tools to find that gold. What kind of a miner would that be? The tools like Shopify, it's behind the scenes helping Sephora sell makeup online.

Or maybe it's Scott's Miracle Grow, which is providing the fertilizer that like every cannabis startup is using right now. Twilio is another shovel seller in the gold rush. And crazily enough, it's probably the one you interact with the most five minutes ago. For our third and final story, this one's wild, fashion brands are starting their own QVC style shopping channels. Because online shopping can be lonely.

QVC, the original influencer out of our generation. Don't know what it stands for. No. But you 100% need this mop that's on QVC right now. We're about to get 10,000 tweets about what that stands. answer check. Back in the 90s, Nick and I would check out cable TV. There's one channel 100% dedicated to selling things. Yeah, you're going to scroll up, you're going to go to usually Channel 8, and by the way, if you're nostalgic for this, you can still get QBC on Roku or like your

Amazon Firestick. But this show was a show without a show. No, it wasn't. It was like the original sign film. It was a non-stop commercial. The whole thing, the whole 30-minute block is just a commercial trying to sell you something. Boom, jewelry, decorations, kitchen grilly thing. The host mimics the in-store personal shopper to get you to buy these and interact with you. And there was a nice, like, common touch vis-a-vis the phone calls from viewers, which the host accepted live. Yeah, there was, Jack. Hey, it's Doug from Bennington. Are these dockers going to look good for my anniversary? Doug, yes. These would be perfect for your anniversary dinner. Doug, these are only intended for your anniversary. Now, QVC is a close relative to the infomercial.

Billy May is here. Good point, good point. Because there's always four years. payments of 1999. And the shipping and handling is not included no cash on delivery. Please pay off fees and shipping and charges. Now, despite all that, there's actually demand for QVC-like video shows from cable-cutting online shoppers today. This is the story that Jack and I found in the Wall Street Journal and found fascinating. Apparently 13,000 people tuned in live on Tommy Hillfigure's website to watch Tommy Hillfigure's fall collection. It's a show hosted by models, influencers, and celebrities showing off Tommy's blue and white shirt a jacket for only 8999. So broadcasts, just like Tommy Hilfiger's

are going direct to consumer from a fashion brand's website or on its YouTube page or on its Instagram page, along with some one-click add-to-card options that are very handy. This has already been a thing in China where Tommy Hilfiger had one live stream show recently with 14 million viewers. That's like NBA Game 2 finals numbers. Million viewers. They actually showed a hoodie during this event. Boom, 1.3,000 of those hoodies sold out in two minutes. Now there are two big behavioral issues. Nick and I have pointed out here with online shop. Yeah, Jack and I chat about

this pretty much every day that there are just too many options and then there's too little imagination when it comes to e-commerce. If you're shopping online, you're overwhelmed with like literally a trillion things you could buy. So true. You need like someone just to support you psychologically through the purchase. So instead, these companies are doing 40-minute fashion event showcases with only 10 items. We're looking at 10 sharp picks from our spring 2020. $1. And Snackers, you've heard say that content is king?

Well, Jack and I like to point out that curation is the queen. That's why they're showing you the oversized wool cardigan super cozy for your post work from home chill. All right, so that's to handle all the like too many options

problem with online sales. But how about the too little imagination problem, Jack? That's why the fashionable hosts of these shows explain the item and help you envision actually owning and wearing.

Care is going to show you what to wear, how to wear it, when to wear it, why to wear it, to make sure you're actually wearing a Doug for that anniversary in Bennington. Too many options, too little imagination. Fashion brands are launching their own QVC-like streaming shows to solve those two problems.

So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in the fashion industry? Without storefronts, catalogs, or dressing rooms, fashion has to get creative. Jack, what do I have to do to get you in these jeans? The Gap person who said that to me, they're standing beside mannequins who are wearing the perfect ensemble for you to think about. And then Jack's going to get escorted by a store of show. all the way to the lovely dressing room where Jack is told, those look fantastic and were made for you.

And I was probably flipping through the catalog, licking my finger before moon past each page, or like a magazine to like figure this stuff out. It's all up to the buyer. So to close sales, these fashion brands are embracing video on their own platforms to take the pressure off of you. The alternative of those QVC style shows

is like the rat race on Instagram and Facebook where ads are extremely expensive. Using one low-key fashion show a season is a super cost-effective way to sell those fancy bell bombs. We're thinking, shouldn't we have these kinds of QVC style shows for everything? Not just fashion? Cars, we're looking at you. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us over there? The Boston Red Sox are reportedly talking to Billy Bean Spack about going public. And that SPAC could benefit from die-hard investors, aka fan investors.

For our second story, Twilio is enabling the apps you love to chat with you. So it's selling customer service shovels in the digital app economy. For our third and final store, QVC-style shopping shows are getting resurrected online by fashion brands. Online shopping can be so lonely. So brands are launching something for you to bin shop to. Now, time for our snack fact of the day. This one tweeted in by Chris Lemke in lovely Grand Rapids, Michigan, Jack, aka. He calls it Beer City.

He did. I mean, Founders is based there. But what else is based there? Yeah. Is it not plural? I guess beer can be singular. Now, I'll tell you, what is based there is former president of the United States, Gerald Ford, aka the only president who was never elected president.

The only president who was never elected president. Now, this is just a snack fact to Paloos over here because that wasn't even Chris's snack. What he did tweet in was that the U.S. dollar is the world's reserve currency. It's not an official title, but you can kind of see that it's true, considering 65 other countries in the world, peg the value of the world. peg the value of their local currency to the U.S. dollar. But it doesn't stop there. As Chris pointed out, the U.S. dollar is also the official currency of five U.S.

territories and seven different sovereign nations. Ecuador, Zimbabwe, Al-S. Salvador, they all, they're like, yeah, we'll just use the U.S. dollar. Yeah, it turns out that over half of the U.S. dollars printed are actually used outside the United States. We're still questioning that Beer City title, though, of Grand Rapids, Michigan. In the meantime, though, Snackers, you'll look fantastic for a T-boy Tuesday. Happy Failure Day. Happy Failure Day. Text your buddies H-Y-H-Y-H-Y-H-Y and apologize for National Failure Day.

Have you, have you, have you, have you had your snacks daily? We'll see you tomorrow. Help spread your snacks. And before we go, Snackers, huge congrats to John and Abbey just got engaged. He got down on one knee up in Sonoma, popping the peanut. And congrats to Milton Nunez, who's just starting his first day on the job. Apparently, is a Tom Brady fan. Because he's from Tampa, Florida. And Alex and Elena, congrats on having the baby. And congrats to Ava Carbonell, who just got a 100 on her sixth grade math

score. And while she was doing that, Alyssa and Bill Kushner celebrated their one-year anniversary over in Long Island. And congrats to Jenna and Jason for getting hitched in Trials Town Mass, aka the town. And to Colin and Kayla, their anniversary over in Cincinnati, Ohio. And happy birthday to Chris Niblet in Huntsville, Alabama.

And to Greg Berry in Norwalk, Ohio. And Marissa Kelly in Millbury, California. and Eric Hinkle in Quaker Town, Pennsylvania, and Millie Ruth in Riverside, California. And happy 30th and one-year snack into Chris White in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. He likes the Twin Cities so much, he couldn't just pick one. It's true. He's like, guilty. This is Jack. Nick owns stock of Shopify. I own stock of Amazon. The Robin Hood Snacks podcast you just heard reflects the opinions of only the hosts

who are associated persons of Robin Hood Financial LLC and does not reflect views of Robin Hood Markets, Inc. or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates. The podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to serve as a recommendation to buy or sell any security and is not an offer or sale of a security. The podcast is also not a research report and is not intended to serve as the basis of any investment decision. Robin Hood Financial, LLC, member FINRA, SIPC.