The Best One Yet - 👄 “Call Her Rich” — Alex Cooper’s $500M pod. Paramount’s Late Fees. Candy Crush’s infinite game. +LA Lakers Midlife Crisis

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

Unwell raised $$ at a $500M valuation… but Alex Cooper’s business model is still unwritten.Paramount might not close its Warner Bros acquisition… which would result in the biggest late fee of all time.Candy Crush is 15 years old and still has 81 million users… because you can never win it.Plus, the LA Lakers just sold for a record $12.5B - more than any team in any sport anywhere.$MSFT $PARA $DIS $PGGrab your Tickets to the IPO Tour: Our In-Person OfferingSan Francisco 9/23: https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/1C0064AFB5F688BDBoston 10/14: https://tickets.citywinery.com/event/tboy-the-ipo-tour-in-person-offering-8cdhupSeattle 11/4 (21+): https://www.axs.com/events/1446394/the-best-one-yet-ticketsNEWSLETTER: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: https://wondery.com/links/the-best-idea-yet/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 Thursday, the new Friday, August 13th. And today's spot is the best one. Yeah, this is a T-Boy. The top three pop business news stories you need to know today. Oh, second and last daily show before our T-Boy annual summer tradition vacation. Yes, but next week we're giving you a sneak peek of our new series.

Oh, how's that for a T's? I'm very excited. Nick and I have been working on this. We're proud to show a T-Ber. Jack, can I drop a spoiler quickly? Sure. If you know, you know. Jack's the only one who knows.

Well, I'm the only one who knows. Our team won't get. You guys sign the NDAs? All right, we're good, we're good, we're good. In the meantime, we got three fantastic stories for the coolest place in capitalism. What do we got you? For our first story, Paramount Studios might have to pay the world's biggest late fee ever. Oh, boy.

Nearly $10 billion. So now they're threatening to quit California. For our second story, it's Candy Crush. It's now the biggest mobile game ever, played by 81 million people. Because the point of Candy Crush is you never actually finish Candy Crush. And our third and final story is call her. Daddy. CHD.

It's now worth $500 million after a Hollywood fundraise. But the business model is Dr. Dre in M&M. But besties, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories.

Oh, what a mix of stories. I'd love to have you here, Jack, looking fantastic, great mix. Forget buying a record-setting yacht or doing a space tourism or buying her own private island. Besties, America's billionaires are on a shopping spree

for sports teams this week. On Tuesday, private equity firm Apollo bought a piece of the New York Yankees. The pinstripe uniform sold to the pinstripe suits. The day before that, Jeff Bezos was reportedly buying a piece of Liverpool FC. Hey, Alexa, add a soccer team to my shopping cart.

And on the third day, yesterday, the Los Angeles Lakers sold for a record price. 12.5 billion, the most expensive sports franchise ever sold. Just one year ago, the Lakers sold for a then-record $10 billion. Cover it on the pot. To the guy who actually owns the L.A. Dodgers, too. But Jack, now he's under a criminal investigation. So he made the fastest two and a half billion. dollar profit ever. He's flipping teams, Nick.

Okay, but... Jack, the new buyers of the Los Angeles Lakers? There's two of them. First is Bob Iger, twice former CEO of Disney. And second is Josh Kushner, brother of President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Now, we should point out both of these men already own other proskirts. Jack, we should also point out Kushner already owns two other pro sports teams. And we've got a theory-wide. Yeah, we do. Buying a pro sports team is the new midlife crisis food.

I mean, Jack, why buy a car? Why buy a yacht? Why buy a really fancy schmant? The car requires maintenance. The yacht could sink and you could lose the watch. Oh, I don't even know what time it is right now. So while those assets deteriorate, sports teams only go up. And that is why besties, if anyone says to you today, did you just see that record selling price for the Los Angeles Lakers? Stom you out, it's a midlife crisis.

It's a midlife crisis. It's just a midlife crisis. We actually pity the buyers of players. Jack, let's hit our three stories. Fifteen years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm. They had an idea to cause a cultural storm. That's one yet, but the best is an norm.

Jack Nick, that's it. I don't even think they need to practice. 50% that's a fat tip. Tea Boy City on your at list. If 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.

For our first story, David Ellison is so mad at California. He's threatening to move Paramount Studios all the way to Texas. Because on June 4th, he'll have. paid almost $10 billion to not buy Warner Brothers. This is the biggest late fee ever. We got to tell you about it. But first, on October 1st, Paramount Studios will leave California unless... Jack, let's sprinkle on some very critical context.

It is a bunch of context here. Paramount Studios agreed earlier this year to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery for $111 billion. And since then, this has played out like a drama screenplay, baby. They won a bidding war against Netflix, which results in Harry Potter, meet Beavis and Butthead. Or Jack Forrest Gump getting married to Tweety Bird. That's Paramount plus Warner Bros. Or maybe it's Tom Cruise and Daffy Duck hanging out. You go with any of those pairings.

And if it sounds like a Christmas present, that's because it kind of is. David Ellison's dad, the founder of Oracle, was buying his son not one, but two Hollywood studios. And federal regulators approved the merger really quickly, but not so fast. California and 11 other states, including New York, sued to stop this second merger. Basically, Jack, because it's political, right? The states historically let the federal government decide on whether to approve mergers and acquisitions or not. But these democratic states believe that the Trump administration approves any deal that involves the president's friends. And the Ellison's, they're major Trump donors.

Which brings us to a new era where mergers and acquisitions need not just federal government approval, but approval from all 50 states. Which presents a huge problem for David Allison. This is the plot to us we were talking about. Starting on October 1st, if the deal hasn't closed, Paramount has to start paying. $7 million per day. Jack, I think what we're saying here is a late fee. It was part of the deal that Warner Brothers agreed to. If you take too long to close this deal, you've got to start paying us late fees. Bessies, remember your blockbuster late fees back in the day? You didn't return that videotape?

Well, Paramounts is $7 million a day. Or Jack, you're the library late fee? You still holding on the catcher on the rye from high school? What do you owe in that thing? Libraries are typically very forgiving. I don't know, seven bucks after seven years. Yeah, that's how the math works out. But Wall Street's not forgiving. Nope. Ours $650 million per quarter starting October 1st. And because of that epic late fee, David is mad. So mad. He's demanding California to settle the suit.

Because it's California's lawsuit that's causing these late fees in the first place. And if they don't, he's going to pack up Paramount Studios and leave California for Tennessee, Georgia, or Texas. That's the threat that came on Wednesday. Now, for the record, California's Attorney General, who's in charge of this lawsuit, calls that threat blackmail and says he won't stand for it. So we're heading for a trial, which happens to happen next March. next March, and that presents an even bigger problem, Nick. Because there's an even bigger late fee here, Jack.

Warner Brothers knew that this Paramount deal had huge political risk, and they didn't want to be stuck forever in regulatory purgatory. So they added an expiration date. Like, if this deal doesn't close on June 4th, the deal's off. June 4th, that's the deadline. But if the deal gets canceled, Nick, then Paramount has to pay Warner Brothers a $7 billion breakup fee. That's bigger than one lift.

Basically, I'm sorry for wasting all this time with this deal that I couldn't close. The biggest such fee in history. And reminder, Paramount already paid Netflix a $2.8 billion breakage fee as well. Because Netflix had signed a deal with Warner Brothers that Paramount came and busted up. So if they don't close this deal by June 4th, he'll have paid $2.8 billion to Netflix and $7 billion to Warner Brothers, but get nothing. We repeat, David Ellison will walk away, having given $10 billion of dad's money to the competition with nothing to show for it. Added all up as you can see, this would go down as the worst acquisition attempt of all time. Because of our takeaway.

So, Jack, what's the takeaway for all our buddies paying the biggest late fee in history? Emotions and contracts do not mix. Now, yet he's both of our fathers-in-law have told us that when you sign big contracts, you can't let emotions cloud your judgment. Thank you, Matt. Thank you, Claudia. Thank you. But that's what the Ellicons have done here.

They've paid 111 billion bucks for something worth just 30 billion bucks. Acquiring two Hollywood studios in one year was an incredible power grab by the young David Ellis. But a big reason for the politics, it's that the Ellsons had already bought CBS News, and now they wanted to own CNN News as well. The investment firm Lightshed says that Paramount is now making its way through the five stages of grief. Okay, what current stage are they acting? They're in the angry stage. Angry. They're threatening to pull Paramount out of California.

But Nick, what comes after anger in the stages of grief? I believe that would be bargaining, Jack. Here's the bargain we think David Ellis might make to try to salvage this deal. Carve out CNN, let that news network remain independent, and maybe, then maybe, they'll be able to acquire Warner Brothers. Leave CNN alone, and maybe the Democrats will drop this lawsuit. But they're in a political quagmire that could end with them giving competitors $10 billion, but having nothing to show for it.

Which would be the worst late fee and the worst failed acquisition attempt of all time. Because emotions and contracts, they simply don't mix. For our second story. A successful mobile game of all time, it's Candy Crush, and yeah, it's still crushing. Fifteen years after its launch. Wow. Candy Crush's secret to survival is ABLE. A-B-L-E. Besties, we're going to start with a wild hero stat here, but 14 years ago, someone filed to

trademark the word candy. Even though the product they made had not a gram of sugar. Candy, add this to the list of tricky trademarks and crazy copyrights, Jack. But before you choke on your Kit-Cat, that candy trademark, would have only applied to video games. Interesting, because it was King Games, the creator of Candy Crush, the biggest game ever that filed that candy trade bar.

And no, they didn't get the trade bar. Must be a sweet tooth in the PTO office. It's going to blind you before you play it, because it's made up of a bunch of neon rainbow objects in a phone. Candy Crush is like if Skittles had a baby with Tetris that was raised on Farmville and had snood as its cousin. Basically, you're swapping colored candy to get three sweets in a row

in a big digital dopamine slot machine. And when you finally nail those combination of candies, they just dissolve and tumble away and are really satisfying way. I should play the chiching button right now, Jack. Odds are someone on your subway car right now is candy crushing. On my airplane yesterday?

Yeah. The guy two seats next to me was candy crushing. And that checks out because 82 million people still play Candy Crush. Last year, Candy Crush branded $876 million of revenue for the parent company. And because you dropped $3 on a gold lollipop booster or if you know, you know, we'll explain that in a minute. But guess who owns Candy Crush?

It's wild. It's not GameStop. It's not like Spencer Gifts. It's Microsoft. Microsoft owns it. The company that's focused on office productivity made the biggest productivity wasting game all the time. Candy's parent company got bought by another video game company, which got bought by Microsoft. But yet here's what Nick and I find fascinating.

The digital world is a graveyard of once viral mobile games that are now nowhere to be seen. Pop, then drop. Farmville got killed by Facebook's algorithm years ago. Pokemon Go, their users are down 80%. Words with Friends has lost its friends. But despite the mobile game boom bus cycle, Candy Crush is still crushing. Now, users of Candy Crush aren't quite at their 2014-2015 ATH all-time highs, right, Jack? But this 15-year-old game is still being played by 81 million people per month.

And those candy crushers aren't gamers. They're non-gamers who don't even own a Nintendo. They're casual gamers who just play on their phone. between Subway. So Jack and I had to figure it out what is the first secret to the Candy Crush success story? First, Candy Crush is placeless. It's distinctively not connected to anywhere or anyone. There's no genders, no races, no locations, no geographies revealed in the gameplay. So universally could be played from Tokyo to South Paulo. It's the same reason so many kids' TV shows have animals as characters.

Right, right. Because they're universal. Okay, the second secret of Candy Crush's success. It's the pause. Unlike many video games, you won't lose if you put your phone down. while playing Candy Crush. Because Candy Crush doesn't rely on another player, you can play in your own time. Filling gaps in your day, just like you would on Instagram or TikTok.

Nobody's trying to kill you in Candy Crush, and there's no timer, and you have to finish the game by X more seconds. It's not like a pro-canny Crusher over there, Jack, which leads to the third secret of Candy Crush success. Candy Crush invented the freemium business model. Oh, you want an extra life to keep on playing? Well, 4% of players buy a $1 gold bar

to keep them in the game. Okay, Nick just said that 4% of Candy Crush's gamers are paid customers. That sounds like a small percentage, but 4% of 81 million, that's 3.2 million paying customers. Buying fake gold bars, which leads to the final and most existential reason for Candy Crush success. The point of Candy Crush is to never finish playing Candy Crush. Whoa.

Like Instagram, there's no end of Candy Crush. But Candy Crush is not an infinite scroll either. Candy Crush has levels that you beat, which act almost like chapter ending, so that's a good time to stop for the day. But after each time you finish a level, Candy Crush builds a new level for you to try to conquer. So they now have 23,000 levels and counting. That's why some gamers are still playing Candy Crush after 15 years. Deep.

So Jack, what's the takeaway? Is that deep? In your expert Candy Crush opinion for our buddies over at Candy Crush. A-B-L-E. Always be launching everything. That is funny detail about Candy Crush that we found in the Bloomberg Deep Dive. Candy Crush, actually, it's six Sibling games. In 2010, the Swedish gaming company King launched six games.

One failed, five showed some potential. So, the creators took the little features of the five mediocre games and poured them into a seventh new game. And that seventh game, that was the winner. Right. It was Candy Crush, which just celebrated in 2023, it's $20 billion of revenue. Now, Bessie, some founders would have launched just one game at a time. They would have worried about confusion. Others wouldn't have launched any games.

They would have waited until it was perfect to launch it and then never launched it at all because it never got perfect. And some founders would have just never even made six games in the first place, considered a waste of weird sources. But King Games was always launching. They took the risk of launching six games at the same time. And the result was the longest running mobile game in history. Candy Crush. A, B, L.E. Always be launching everything. Now a quick word from our sponsor.

For our third and final story, Call Her Daddy, just became a half a billion dollar biz. It's officially a demi-unicorn. But what does ultimate success look like to a creator? It could be Dr. Dre or it could be Proctor and Gamble. Interesting. But first, uh, what's up, Yeti Gang? This is your founding co-father. No, no, it's, what's up, Yeti, gang?

This is your founding co-father. You've been practicing in front of the mirror. I'm trying to be sultry, but I'm not sure that was sultry. I thought we can't say sultry on the pot. Oh, no, it was licked. It was licked. Yeti's call her daddy. He started as the raunchy bar stool show with best buddies. A not-safe-for-work pod version of Cosmo magazine.

But six years after splitting off in bars to a call her daddy is now worth $500 million bucks. Yeah, Alex has gone from her $60 million deal with Spotify in 2021 to a $125 million deal with Sirius XM. And now she's taking her talents to venture capital. On Wednesday, Alex announced that she raised outside money for the first time from an L.A. firm founded by a super agent at a $500 million valuation. We should all split out. She did this while six months pregnant, Jack.

Yeah, I'm glad you got this in before leave. Every trimester could have been an advertising opportunity, just pointing that out. I don't totally know what that means, but I kind of like it. Well, if you know, you know. But, Jack, why don't you sprinkle on more context for us over there? No brand owns young women like Alex Cooper does. Not Eritzia, not Bravo, not Haley Bieber's Road Beauty either. Jack, the daddy gang is the girls who get it.

I don't know what that means either. Maybe that means I don't get it. It means you're not being sultry enough, Jack, because they've got 100 million followers, 89% are female, 75% are under 35, unmatched numbers in the industry. And the daddy gang is the macha to mortgage demographic. That's a key demographic. Very attractive cohort to advertisers. We're talking an age range from college to family decision makers.

That is valuable. So what should this single podcaster do with tens of millions of dollars of cash infusion? Well, Jack and I think maybe the business model here is a record label. Look at Dr. Dre. He started his own record label. And he used that to sign other artists like M&M. Well, then Eminem started his own record label under Dr. Dre's record label and used that to sign 50 cent. So that's one way to think about the future of Call Her Daddy.

Right. To sign other talent to keep the flywheel going. Alex Earl, the influencer, got her own show on Caller Daddy's network, although she unsigned from the network a year later. So she's going to sign another star now. But Alex Cooper went on CNBC on Wednesday and said she might use the money for acquisitions. Okay, so maybe it's the Martha Stewart model. The Martha Stewart model, Jack, why don't you? That's a nice thing.

Why don't you? She could build a content and product empire around one person like Martha did. Because so far, anything Alex Cooper touches gets 15,000 reposts. But Nick, maybe music and Martha, maybe neither of those are the right analogy. Maybe it's something actually a lot less sexy. So Jack, what's the takeaway for all our buddies looking at half a billion dollar call her daddy? Is it Dr. Dre, Martha Stewart, or Procter & Gamble? Yeah, P&G.

Yet he's, Call Her Daddy, is just the flagship show. Unwell is Alex Cooper's company that owns the Call Her Daddy podcast. And Unwell has become a bona fide business. Way beyond content. You got the Unwell Ad Network, which got a Google Cash infusion to make commercials and ads for microdramas. Then you got the podcast network. Which has 11 other shows.

You got the Unwell Winter Games. A live reality TV show on YouTube that we covered on this podcast. And then the physical hydration product lineup. Which is distributed globally by Nestle. And now yet he's Mr. Beast is on the same path as Alex Cooper. He's 10 times bigger right now. A $5 billion YouTube business, and YouTube is just a fraction of it. It is fascinating, but over half of Mr. Beast's company is now feastable.

We repeat, Mr. Beast makes more money from chocolate than from videos. So we're all up, and we've got to ask, what does the ultimate success look like for a creator-centric business? It started as Disney, content at the center turning the merch and experienced flywheel. But then Alex Cooper made it into Martha Stewart, and Mr. Beast makes it look like Proctor and Gamble. Business history is being made before our eyes, one repost out of time. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us for the new Friday?

Paramount is running out of time to acquire Warner Brothers, and they're racking up the biggest late fees in history. It could go down as the worst failed acquisition of all time, because emotions and contracts are all mixed. For our second story, Candy Crush is still kicking it at age 15, with 81 million users. The world's biggest mobile game was born by always launching everything able. And our third and final story is Alex Cooper. Her unwell raised venture capital money at a $500 million evaluation.

Is a Martha Stewart, Dr. Dre, P&G. We don't know what she'll do with the fresh funding, but we'll cover it on the pod. But besties, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. First, the next big thing in AI is really a little thing, but an important thing. It's a watermark. Claude, by Anthropic, will soon put an invisible watermark on any text, images. or videos that it creates.

Anything caught creates for you? It's going to have a silent little signal to tell all the computers out there. They're doing it to comply with the European Union law, but it also gives us a way to say, did AI make that or did the human make that? Yeah, the professors,

they're going to like running this on the term papers, Jack. Second, the inflation situation remains in formation. We just got the monthly report of prices in this economy, and how are we looking, Jack? The consumer price index showed that prices rose 0.1% in July

and are up 3.4% compared to last year. The worst offenders, airfare up 25% from a year ago, and anything with memory chips is up 22%. Interestingly, lettuce prices fell 16% because of the explosive diarrhea keeping us away from grades. You know, you unfortunately know. And finally, the University of Michigan wants you to enjoy your freshman year of beer. So, no grades for a semester. It's a pilot program to curb the stress of transitioning to college. Instead of a letter grade, your first semester transcript will simply have a pass or was drinking and hanging out and partying too much.

Nick, when we're at Middlebury, I'm pretty sure that one class, the freshman orientation class, I think everyone got an A automatically in that. That's a nice touch, Jeff. That was only one class, though. Or there's the brown option, Jack, we can go past fail pretty much all four years. Now, time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Jordan Marsh from lovely Cape Town South Africa. Water is not wet.

We repeat, water is not wet, according to scientists. It isn't wet. Most scientists define wetness as a liquid's ability to maintain. maintain contact with a solid surface. And that means that water itself is not wet, but can make other objects wet. Yeah, I'm still not totally getting this. So what is wet, if not water?

That which hath been touched by the water. Yadies, you look fantastic for our second to last daily show before vacation. Jack, you are glown over there, even though you just got off a cross-country flight man. Yeah, I do want to be clear, though. We are going to publish daily episodes. Oh, you're just not going to be news episodes.

They're going to be evergreen new content that Nick and I are thrilled to show you. We got some special stuff for an yet. Ultimately, we want it to be a YouTube series, but we're showing it to you right here first. That's the context. More coming next week. In the meantime, Jack and I will see you, Mniana.

And before we go, a happy birthday to legendary Yeti, Andrew Mahler from Sussex, Wisconsin, turned in 30 years old. He and his wife, Trish, love doing our budget brunches once per month. And Sebastian Megan Sidor has his 29th birthday and one-year wedding anniversary over in New York. Happy birthday to Dylan Steinfeld, the bowling king of Atlanta. Congrats, buddy and Mara Chavin down in Nashville celebrating the hockey talk. Happy birthday to Sabrina St. Peter in Michigan.

And Alexis Aronson, happy 32nd birthday down in Greenwich Village. And congrats to Justin Hartman, who just got promoted to field training officer at Bell Ambulance. And Danny Gull, thanks for sending us that email about the Burger King CEO getting a phone call from a radio station. Loved hearing about it. And to anyone else celebrating something today, make it a tee boy. Celebrate the wins. This is Jack. I own stock at Disney and we both on stock of Spotify.