The Best One Yet - 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👨👩‍❤️‍💋‍👨 “Bring a Friend” — Hinge’s double-date. Netflix’s fake K-Pop band. Golf’s profit puppy.

Episode Date: August 8, 2025

The #1 movie on Netflix is also the #1 album on Spotify… K-Pop Demon Hunters reveals the #1 metric in media.Hinge is defying the dating app downturn… because women love double dates.Despite rainy summer weather, Titleist had its best Q ever… and golfballs are its Profit Puppies.Plus, we can officially crown the drink of the summer… The Spaghett.$GOLF $MTCH $NFLX $SPOTWant more business storytelling from us? Check out the latest episode of our new weekly deepdive show: The untold origin story of… Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinks to listen.NEWSLETTER:https://tboypod.com/newsletter OUR 2ND SHOW:Want more business storytelling from us? Check our weekly deepdive show, The Best Idea Yet: The untold origin story of the products you're obsessed with. Listen for free to The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinks NEW LISTENERSFill out our 2 minute survey: https://qualtricsxm88y5r986q.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_dp1FDYiJgt6lHy6GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Linkedin (Nick): https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-martell/Linkedin (Jack): https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-crivici-kramer/Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ About Us: The daily pop-biz news show making today’s top stories your business. Formerly known as Robinhood Snacks, The Best One Yet is hosted by Jack Crivici-Kramer & Nick Martell. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. It's Friday, the Real Friday. August 8th. And today's pod is the best one yet. This is a T-boy. The top three pop business news stories you need to know today. Yeties, the trade war, never been more intense.

90 countries were just hit with a new tariff effective yesterday morning. But we said before it's not a stock market. It's a shrug market. Shrug market. Wall Street is not concerned with the tariffs. They already shrugged it off. Stocks remain near all-time highs. So, as usual, Jack and I,

will keep you updated as always, as this develops. But in the meantime, Jack, you've got a concert to go to tonight, don't you? Dude, Mumford and Sons, and the rumor is that Noah Khan is going to come on stage. And I hope they bring you up on stage, Jack. Keep up a takeaway up there. If they bring me on stage, I'm taking my shirt off. You heard it here first. That's some pop biz, baby.

But Jack, we have three fantastic stories for today's show. What are we got on the T-boy? For our first story, one brand is defying the dating app downturn. It's Hinge. where their users jumped 18% last quarter. Because Hinge found the root to a woman's heart, the double date. For our second story, the number one movie on Netflix right now is also the number one album on Spotify.

K-pop Demon Hunters. Real title, that's the name, K-pop Demon Hunters. It reveals the most important metric in the whole media industry. For our third and final story, despite a brutal summer of rainy weather, Titleist Golf just had its best quarter ever. So Jack and I dove in T-boy style on why golf balls are bigger than golf clubs. But yeties, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories.

A fantastic mix of stories to go into a weekend. Love the mix. The Drink of the Summer 2025, Nick and I predicted right before Memorial Day that it would be the margarita. Ah, the margarita, because in moments of instability like right now, consumers crave comfort. But it turns out we were wrong. Yeah, we were wrong. The drink of the summer is actually the special. Spaghetti. And that's spaghetti. It's the spiggette. Jack and I will explain. A spigette is a bottle of Miller High Life where you pour out a little bit of the beer and replace that space with an a apparel shot and then a squeeze of lemon. It's basically a cheaper version of an apparel spritz. It's a spritz. It's also known as a NASCAR spritz or a hobo negroni. Or the trailer park cocktail. It doesn't sound like my kind of drink, but let's roll with it, Jack. Dude, I've had one. Delicious.

It has the same core flavor profile of an operol spritz. You know, carbonation with a twist of fruit. But instead of $15, it's only going to cost you $5. Because it traded out the fancy Prosecco for the cheapest beer in the bar. It's a financial trick shot. That's what we find fascinating. 80% of the taste for 50% of the cops. 100% of the satisfaction.

And this summer, sales are surging for this apparel spritz dupe. Get this. According to Square, orders for spaghettes. are up 65% from last year. Since 2022, orders for spigets are up 1,000%. Spaghetti, Spaghettis, whatever. It actually was invented in Baltimore 10 years ago. Yeah, daugarees in football.

That's what Maryland does. I think it's spigets in football. Because in this economy, you sub-out the tariffed Italian Prosecco for the untariffed American beer. By the way, Yettis, I was served my first spaget at the after party of our live show. And I didn't pay for it. I was a witness. A lovely Yeti. flew in from Dallas bought one for me.

It was great. And you know what, besties? We can still taste the savings. Let's hear our three stories. One more round! Forget some on us! Fifteen years before this song. Two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm.

They had an idea to cause a cultural storm. It's the best one yet, but the best is a norm. Jack Nick, that's it. 50% that's a fat tip. Tea Boy City on your at list. If you know you know, you know, because we're ready to go. We can't wait no more, so just start the show. Start the show.

First, a quick word from our sponsor. Our first story. Who says dating apps are dead? Your single friend might. But match stock? Just jump 10% on a dating app turnaround led by Hinge. Hinge has revealed the secret to a woman's heart is a double date. Ah, Yetis, Tinder fatigue, swipe sickness, bumble burnout.

The macro theme in the dating game. Yeah, Jack? I'm done letting algorithms decide my date. Even though the dating app industry is tariff proof, dating app stocks, they are down, the users have been lost, and profits have been cut. Just about every dating app stock is down at least 80% from their all-time high. Instead, for Gen Z, their meat cutes are IRL again. Run clubs, book clubs, going clubbing at actual clubs.

People are trying to meet other people in person. Jack, our creative director, Rachel, she met a guy when she got injured at a triathlon meet. Right? I think he was a medic. Yeah. She's the first person to request CPR. No, no, no, she's the first person to give her insurance number before her phone number. I think I need mouth to mouth. I'm not sure if you do, but we'll roll with it.

Yeties, this has led to such surprising news, Jack and I had to cover it. And the news is from Hinge. Hinge announced yesterday that the number of paying users rose 18% last quarter for their parent company, Match Group. A Tinder actually shrank again, but Hinge's revenue jumped 25%. Revenue per a paying user, it's up to $10 a month. Now, the context here, Hinge is the more mature dating app. It's less hookup, more Apple picking in October with a very nice sweater hookup. Both Tinder and Hinge are owned by match, and the stock jumped 10% yesterday.

Yeah. Hinge is crushing it. Those aren't our words. Yeah. Those are the CEO's words. The first time we've ever heard crushing it on a corporate earnings call, and we're cool with it. So, Nick, what is Hinge doing that RIA, the league, and OKCupid aren't? Well, here's what we discovered.

Hinge is focused on females. As the CEO put it, the Hinge team put a significant focus on the female experience. For example, Hinge is cut down on ghosting with a reminder to get guys to respond to your DMs. Come on, guys, come on, man. Hinge has found an interesting balance. They're not explicitly female first, like Bumble. They're more female influenced when developing new features. Right.

And that female focus, it has also influenced Tinder with their new feature, Double dating. You and another single friend who's on Tinder can become a package deal on the dating app. Basically, if you want to date us, bring a friend because we are double date only. And last quarter, Tinder launched the double date feature to couple up, and the numbers have been fantastic. Users are in love with it. What are we seeing in check? Women are three times more likely to send a reaction and four times more likely to match when one of them are using the double date feature. But women have become the power users. A third of Tinder is now using this.

double date feature. 26-year-old Sarah is sick of swiping on dating apps. Yep. But it becomes a more fun activity if her roommate Ruby gets to team up with her. So add it all up and Tinder's business model just got saved by a wingwoman. Even if the date is a disaster, Sarah and Ruby can go to another place and laugh about it. Yeah, and it's probably more fun. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in the dating apps?

Products are like real relationships. You gotta keep them spicy. Says the guy taking his shirt off at a concert tonight. Yeties, last time we covered dating apps. It was in April. Tinder had just tested out a new thing called the flirtbot. It's basically an AI chat bot in your DMs to help you improve your pickup lines. But so far, it sounds like that hasn't worked.

They haven't mentioned this flirt bot feature on their earnings call. It seems like it failed. But Tinder also launched their double date feature. And that feature has worked. Yes, it has. And that's a reminder to all of us to A, B, L-E. always be launching everything. Some features stick, some features stink.

You can't predict how people will respond. But either way, Match kept it spicy by launching a whole bunch of features to revive their business. And the double dating feature worked, and it helped boost the stock by 10% yesterday. For our second story, the top movie on Netflix right now is also the top music on Spotify, K-pop Demon Hunters. The wild success of this cartoon band reveals the number one metric you need to know about. Time spent. Time spent.

Speaking of time spent, yet he's Jack and I were watching some Netflix over the weekend. We noticed something interesting and we had to dive in T-boy style. The number one album in the world right now is a soundtrack to a Netflix cartoon movie. Netflix and Spotify is like a cultural merger we're going through Jack. Let's break it down. Let's break it down. K-pop Demon Hunters. Yep.

The protagonists of this movie are a K-pop girl band, and their music, which is fictional, is fire. In fact, seven of the top 11 songs in America right now,

according to Spotify, are from this K-pop demon hunter animated movie. And those same seven songs are also in Spotify's top 20 globally. Basically, they're making BTS blush right now.

Now, I've been listening to the music all morning as I researched this story. I'm officially a fan boy. You're going to that concert too, Jack? So, wait, let me just add this up for a second, man. All right, we got a fictional band that is the top real band on Spotify, and it's been in the Netflix top 10 movies for seven weeks now.

Yeah, it's not K-pop, it's fake pop, but it's real. But yet is this is what we discovered. This movie that we're talking about right now, it's actually been watched twice as much as the movie theater blockbusters this year. What the heck is K-Based? pop demon hunter. Okay, we'll explain. K-pop demon hunters is an animated movie. It's produced by Sony and it is streamed right now on Netflix. Here's the plot. There are these demons in Korea that suck the souls out of people and the only way to defeat them is with music. For hundreds of years,

there's been one K-pop girl band that slays those demons and they do it with singing. But here's the conflict. This latest evolution of demons, they transformed into a K-pop boy band. And this K-pop boy band are absolute heart throbs. So the people they're trying to victimize are total fanboys just like me. Add it all up in the soundtrack that is number one on Spotify, it's half sung by the K-pop Demon Hunters and half sung by the demon boy band. Now here's what we found fascinating. This movie is the number one most watched movie in the world this year by 2X.

All right, we got the numbers. The number one box office, U.S. movie, is Lilo and Stitch, with a billion dollars in revenue. And if you assume a $6 per ticket global average price, that means it's been watched by 170 million movie theater goers. Okay, but K-pop Demon Hunter on Netflix, it's been viewed 159 million times, slightly less than Disney's Lilo and Stitch, but still rising fast. But Nick, that's not Apple's apples to apples. Right.

Because Netflix isn't watched alone. The average Netflix view includes two people or more. So, by our math, K-pop Demon Hunters is actually the number one watch movie on Earth. Not just number one. It has twice as many views as the top theatrical blockbuster. Sit down, stand up, and sing it all over again. Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at K-pop demon hunters? Netflix understands the metric that matters, but Hollywood doesn't. Yeties, yesterday Jack and I covered Disney's earnings report. We told you about it, but we didn't mention that Disney subscribers have actually stopped growing.

Disney is pretty much topping out at 185 million subscribers. That's a little more than half of Netflix subscribers. So why is Disney's audience half as big as Netflix's? Well, they're not looking at the right metric over at Disney. Netflix's hero metric is the same hero metric of TikTok, Instagram, Duolingo, and all the other tech companies. It's time spent. Netflix doesn't care about when in Oscars or box office. revenues, those are vanity metrics to these guys. What they care about is how much time their

subscribers spend watching Netflix. Or another way to think about this? A Hollywood executive ain't interested if you watch for two minutes or two hours because both those viewers pay them the same amount. Old school execs are like, who cares? As long as they're paying, I don't care how much time they spend. But a Netflix exec knows that more time spent is a reflection of more love and that you're more likely to stay subscribed for a longer period of time. So K-pop Demon Hunter, It's not on the list of top box office movies, but it's number one where it matters. Time spent. Now a quick word from our sponsor.

For our third and final story, Titleist, the number one ball in golf is now the number one ball on the stock market as well. Titleist just announced record revenue for its five different golf brands, but their business model is the same as your printer. Yes, it is. But Jack, I mean, is there? Are there any better brand exposure than being the punchline in a joke on Seinfeld? That's a life goal for us right here. Push and play. I could barely see from the waves crashing down upon me, but I knew something was there.

So I reached my hand and felt around and pulled out the obstruction. But is that a title list? A title list. Yet he's sometimes, Jack and I get frustrated when a corporation misses an opportunity. to brand their company to the public. Because one publicly traded company owns only golf brands. They own Titleist. They own Scotty Cameron.

They own Pinnacle. They own footjoy. They own all of them. But instead of calling themselves Golf Corp, Bertie Holdings, or Foreplay, Inc., they called themselves a Kushnit. This is a pure play putterstock,

and yet their name is Akushnet? No, I guess it's named after the river in the city where the company was founded, which is in Massachusetts. Just outside Boston. We think Akushnit should actually be called Titleist, because Titleist is their biggest brand in golf, and it's 63% of this company's sales. If they were called Titleist, Cosmo Kramer would be a shareholder.

Well, this brand, well, this golf company just had its best quarter in golf history. Record revenue, record profit, and the stock is sitting close to an all-time high. They just tap, tap, tap, tap, tap it in. So besties, here's what Jack and I are thinking. Like a golfer who just finished 18, how about we count up a Cushnet score for the past five years? Gladly, Nick. The pandemic created a ton of new American golfers. Oh, we're talking huge numbers here, right, Jack? Revenue for this golf company today is $2.5 billion a year compared to $1.5 billion pre-pandemic.

And you know what? You can actually see those new golfers in this company's financial numbers. Nick and I jumped in T-boy style to the 2021 annual report. In that year, golf club sales, grew twice as fast as golf ball sales. Now, here's why that's interesting. Usually, it's the opposite. Because you only need golf clubs every five to ten years, but you need new golf balls all the freaking time. I go through three sleeves per hole jack, and that's a record.

Dude, I love Lynx courses, because you can always find your ball. I just take other people's balls. I'll admit it here. Victimless crime. Now, despite the brutally wet early summer we've had in 2025, Akushnit reported solid golf ball sales in the second quarter. All of the northeast of this country had almost 25 straight weekends of rain this year. It was brutal. As a result, I've only played two rounds this year.

But golfers still bought umbrellas. But apparently golfers were buying umbrellas. Actually, Nick, golfers bought golf umbrellas from a kushnet. Yeah, we see that too. Golf gear was the fastest growing category for the company by far this year. But this part's interesting. If you think about it, there's a direct correlation between the number of golf balls purchased and the amount of golf being played. And the number of golf balls bought remains about 40% higher than before the pandemic. The pandemic golf boon has not waned. So Jack, gold

jacket, green jacket, what's the takeaway, Jack, for our buddies in the golf industry? Even though printers are dead, the printer and ink business model lives on. Yeties, new golf clubs are very expensive, but surprisingly, they also don't make much profit. Think about it. Golf clubs are costly to make. There's a bunch of different lengths, there's different pitches. You need a left-handed and a right-handed variation. Ah, but balls, on the other hand, are much more uniform, so the factory can pop out a million of those balls way more efficiently. That's why golf balls are about 20 percentage points more profitable than golf clubs. And that's why Titleist is happy to offer you a discount on that nice new set of irons because that buyer is a ball buyer for the

rest of their life. And the balls are where the real profit is made. Besties, this is the same business model as the printer. The printer is the unprofitable part. And the printer ink. That's the profitable part. Because the profits are in the balls. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us for the Real Friday? Matches dating stock rebounded 10% yesterday.

Thanks in part to Hinge and the double date feature in Tinder. Products, they're like real relationships. You gotta keep them spicy. For our second story, K-pop Demon Hunters is the number one movie and the number one one album in the world right now. And it shows the media metric that matters most. Time spent. And our third and final story is Akushnet.

The pure play golf stock that owns Titleist just reported record sales of golf balls. Is that a pro-vie one? Even though printers are dead, the printer-ink business model, it lives on in golf. But Yeties, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today.

First, OpenAI just launched ChatGPT-5. new and improved version of the flagship chatbot. Will we notice a difference? Probably not, but techies swear this is a big deal. Apparently it's going to use fewer M-Dashes and be less sycophantic in its compliments. It's not going to suck up to you as much, you know. It'll apparently give quicker answers to.

That's a great description, Jack. And second, the IPO market is hot right now. Firefly, the developer of rockets and other space vehicles, is up on the New York Stock Exchange. A $10 billion valuation after the stock opened. 50% higher. Firefly barely makes revenue, but they are developing reusable rockets just like SpaceX. So it's a proxy to SpaceX. Right. SpaceX unfortunately continues to be a sumo stock. Yeah, and what's a sumo stock, Jack?

If you want to invest in SpaceX, sadly, you're missing out. S-U-MO, straight up missing out. And finally, remember we covered breast milk flavored ice cream in the spring on a T-Boy episode? It's from a company Frida Baby, which makes baby goods. They wanted to raise awareness for their products. It was a product tisement, a product advertisement. Well, that breast milk ice cream launched yesterday, and it's already sold out. Although, T-shirts are available.

You can get the merch. We know what you're wondering. It's flavored like breast milk. It's not real breast milk. Yes. Made out of dairy. Exactly. But it tastes like breast milk, apparently.

Now, time for the best fact yet, which is actually a correction from Yeti's Jack Leonard and Thomas Sexton. We did a story this week on the New York Post, which calls itself the longest-running daily newspaper in America. And the Post was founded by Alexander Hamilton, but Jack and I were surprised that wasn't mentioned in the musical about Hamilton. And therein was the correction. Here, Hamilton, the musical does explicitly credit Alexander Hamilton with founding the New York Post.

It's true. It was just mentioned so quickly in the rap lyrics that I somehow missed it, even though I've seen this play like eight times. Here's the actual lyric. How Does Hamilton, the short-tempered protein creator of the Coast Guard, founder of the New York Post. Okay. I missed it. I'm sorry. Also, Jack, I got one more correction. This one sent in by Molly Martel, my wife. Oh, but okay.

Did I say something? No, I said this week, we have all those brands in our closet, fashion brands. Okay, she wanted to clarify, she does own Lulu Lemon and Quince, but she does not own Suzanne anymore, and she's never owned Vioree. She's owned Apple. Dude, that's so funny. Alex was annoyed that I didn't mention she's a thread-up customer.

Dude, every week our closet gets emptier because of her thread-up usage. So, Yetis, we apologize to everyone for Jackson, my corrections. And you all look fantastic this week, by the way. Celebrate the wins and tell a buddy when you're at brunch, H-Y-H-T-B-O-I. That's how we grow the show.

Have you had the best one yet? It's the best way we grow the show is you telling friends about it. If you know, you know. And before we go, a happy birthday to Darren Jackson, a Yeti, listening on Spotify. Happy birthday to Jonah Faye Herbitts in Brooklyn, New York. And Kyle Suko is turning 33 years old down in lovely Los Angeles. Happy 30th birthday to

Dumain Babcock in Los Angeles. And a happy birthday to Anna Hayes, the Brooklynite finished her first draft of her first novel. Happy birthday to the bioengineer Vedant Raoul in San Francisco. And Mark Niles the Panthers turning 62 years old from Middlebury and living in London, baby. Happy 24th birthday to Allie Gentile in Boston, Massachusetts. Just as I, Boston. And Adam DeVita, the legendary besties, turning 30 years old down and lovely Bocoretta in Florida. Thank you, Adam. Happy 35th birthday to Kelvin Liu in Ontario Ranch, California.

And Juan Fang in Irvine, California celebrating the best birthday yet. Happy 51st to Dan Notton in Winston-Salem, the Dash, North Carolina. And to everyone named Kevin today, who hasn't heard yesterday's pod, go listen to yesterday's pod. And to anyone else celebrating something today to make it a team. Boy, celebrate the wins. This is Jack. I'm on stock of Netflix, Disney, and Bumble, and Nick and I both on stock of Spotify.