The Best One Yet - 🪓 “I just bought a baseball team nbd” — Atlanta Braves’ stock. Crocs’ collab economy. China’s no-bad-news policy.

Episode Date: August 16, 2023

The Atlanta Braves just became the first publicly-traded baseball stock — So we jumped into their roster… which is their earnings report. Ever heard of a Croc-Tart? It’s a Crocs and Pop-Tart collab — Because collabs are affordable noise. And China just canceled its Youth Unemployment Report — Because 2023 China is starting to look like 1993 Japan. $CROX $K $BATRA Want merch, a shoutout, or got TheBestFactYet? Go to: www.tboypod.com Follow The Best One Yet on Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok: @tboypod And now watch us on Youtube Learn 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. It's Wednesday, Cevice Wednesday, August 16th. And today's pod is the best one yet. It's a T-boy. I'm checking the girl math right here. If you buy something for under four bucks, then it's free. If you spend 75 bucks to get free shipping, then you saved money.

If you plan on buying something, but then don't end up buying it, you made money. Oh, and today's podcast is basically free. Oh, it's free. A hundred percent free. You're making money if you listen to the show, figuratively. Now you owe us money, Jack, what's the first story for today's show? The Atlanta Braves just became the first publicly traded baseball team. Their earnings report is literally a roster.

For our second story, have you heard of a crock tart? A crock tart? It's a pair of crocs inspired by Pop-Tarts. Yeties, Jack and I found out why 2023 is the year of the brand collab. And our third and final story is China. In a surprise move, China stopped publishing their youth unemployment rate. China 2020 is starting to be. to look a lot like Japan 1993. But Yetis, before we hit that fantastic mix of stories.

Lovely mix of stories. What a mix of stories today, Jack. Can you please verify that you're not a robot? Please click on all the taxis in this image. Please click on all the street lights in this image. Please click on all the couples on green bicycles doing wheelies near a mountain in this image. Yeties, we have all done the CAPTCHA puzzle before. The CAPTCHA puzzle. That annoying little speed bump on your little online. journey every day. Captcha. It's a way to prove online that you're not a robot. Capcha, it was actually created by the founder of Duolingo quite a few years ago.

But that guy sold CAPTCHA to Google in 2009. Now, Jack and I should sprinkle on a little context here, shouldn't we, Jack? Captcha isn't just a funny word. It's also an acronym. Get this. Captcha actually stands for completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart. Did you hear Turing?

Nick just mentioned Turing. Turing is Alan. Turing, the man who invented the computer. Turing, the man who thought that one day robots might become smarter than humans. And Turing invented a test to prove that you're not a robot. But there is a funny problem with that test, that Capsha test. Captia tests are having a lot of trouble telling humans and robots apart these days. Yeti's artificial intelligence has gotten so good that it can solve Capsha puzzles 99.8% of the time.

Translation, robots are passing to... tests that they're not robots all the time. And here's the worst part. Humans only solve caption puzzles about 33% of the time. Which means that robots are better at proving they're not robots than humans are. Save us, Alan Turing. Your only hope. And that's why you may have noticed some new capture puzzles recently.

Yeah, they're no longer simply checking the box, I am not a robot anymore. No, they're not clicking images that just include traffic lights either. Nowadays, you have to hold down your mouse for like 10. 10 seconds, jump up and down in front of your screen, and then sing the friend's theme song all at once. I'm sorry, I'm going to have to double check if you're a robot or a Jack, Jack. How are you going to turn that out, Nick? I'm going to need a cookie crisp. Cookie crisp.

That's something AI still can't do, Nick. Hey, human, let's hit our three stories. 15 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 Tiss. 50%. That's a fat tip.

T-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. For our first story, the Atlanta Braves are the first publicly traded major league baseball team. Braves fans are the only baseball fans who can root for the team and own the team, too. Yeah, it is the Atlanta Braves. They have always had a funny relationship with America, haven't they, Jack?

That's because in the 70s, they got bought by Ted Turner, the billionaire. cable TV mogul. And then Ted Turner put those Braves baseball games on TVS. One of his TV channels, every game was on nationwide TV. So Tuesday night in New York City or Thursday night in Alaska, all Americans who had cable could watch the Braves. It was the only team like that. If you grew up in the 90s, you were very familiar with Greg Maddox's biceps, right, Jack? Like, you got to know those things on TV. They're not that big Greg Maddox's biceps, by the way. Greg, I didn't say it. Jack said it. Pitching's weird. Little guys can throw really hard. Well, in the 2000s, Ted Turner sold the Braves to another company called Liberty Media.

And just last month, Liberty Media spun off the Atlanta Braves into a separate company. Which means we just got the news. The Braves are now the Major League Baseball's first publicly traded baseball team. Yadies, we got ourselves the first ever pure play pitching stock. The Braves trade baseball players. Now you can trade the Braves on the NASDAQ stock exchange too. Now, we know you're thinking, Willie from Wisconsin, what about the Green Bay Packers? Don't they have a stock, too?

Technically, you can buy stock at the Green Bay Packers. But you can't buy that stock on NASDAQ or the New York Stock Exchange. But you can buy the Atlanta Brave stock anywhere you can buy a stock. And the Atlanta Braves happened to be a baseball franchise worth $2.8 billion. The Atlanta Braves holding company includes the team, the stadium, and those dirty piles of sunflower seeds on the dugout floor. Which is worth about the same amount as Lyft, by the way. Now, this publicly traded baseball team might get snatched up by some billionaire sometime soon. But for now, anybody can buy Brave stock.

So, yet, he's Jack and I got curious about this brand new baseball stock, so we decided to jump in T-boy style to the roster, which is their earnings report. Revenues for the Atlanta Braves are up 11% so far this year, as the entire MLB enjoys a ticket sales boost this year. Baseball, they shorten the games this year, and now they're getting more fans, which is driving up baseball sales. It's nine innings, not nine hours, which is nice. The most exciting thing for baseball since the cleat.

So while revenues are up for the Braves, operating costs are up too. That's right. The costs for the Atlanta Braves jumped 19% from last year, mainly because of their player salaries. The Braves are leading the NLEs this year. They're having a good season. And those runs don't score themselves. You got to pay to play. Add it all up and the Brave swung from a profit last year to a loss this year.

Buy me some peanuts and cracker jam. The Braves, they are dominating on the baseball diamond with 76 wins this season. They're losing financially. Which begs the question, what's Chipper Jones hiding under that go-toe, Jack? Probably some cash flow. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at the Atlanta Braves? The Braves are the only big four pro-US team with fan vesters. Yet he's my pod son, also known as Jack's son, Wilder.

His grandparents actually gave him a $1,000 check last year, not too shabby. So I, as his father-father, set up a 529 account for Wilder. and bought him some Disney stock. And I know why you did that, Jack. Wilder loves movies like Frozen and he loves cars and he loves Toy Story. All of those are Disney movies. Now, Nick, someday I'll explain to Wilder that he owns this company that he loves so much. Right, because he has shares of Disney.

Well, now Brave's fans can do that by owning Atlanta Brave stock. Yadies, when your investors also love the company, they're more loyal, they're more faithful, and they're more willing to pay for that stock no matter the price. I didn't look at the price of Disney stock. I was just going to get it for Wilder because he loves it. That's the glory of having fan vesters, not investors. The Braves. They're one of the few stocks on the stock market with fan investors.

For our second story, the latest brand collab out there, it's crocs and pop tarts. Croc tarts. It's the year of the brand collaboration, and we will tell you why. Oh, the brand collaboration. Or is Jack and I like to call it the good old mashup marketing? When two brands collide for one freaky creation. Yeah, brand collapse. They're like the corporate love child of two very eager marketing teams, Jack. It's when two marketing teams say, help me, help you. Help us. Help us. And mashup marketing is having a big moment in this economy.

Like Crocs and Pop-Tart. Crocs and Pop-Tart just launched a package deal. Yeah, you're going to get Crocs with Pop-Tard gibbets. And you also get Pop-Tarts with edible crox-shaped gibbits. So what we're saying here yet is this is a collaboration in which you both get a shoe and a food at the same time. According to their press teams, this is an ingenious pairing of flavor and footwear. According to Oz, this is what Willie Wonka would wear. This is Stuart Whitesman, but covered in deliciousness. Now, we would say that this is a shocking combo, crocs and pop tarts.

But it actually feels expected at this point that they would tag up. Because Jack and I jumped in T-Boy style, and we noticed there had been a lot of brand collaborations this year. A lot of random, completely unrelated brand collaborations this year. In fact, there have actually been a record number of brand collaborations this year. It started with the Barbie movie, whose $150 million marketing budget was bigger than the film's budget. And that allowed the Barbie movie to pull off 100 mash-up marketing deals. Barbie Xbox, Barbie Burger King Burgers, and Barbie State Farm car insurance.

But it wasn't just Barbie Pink yet. He's Jack, can we talk about the freaky food collaborations this year? Peep's partnered with Pepsi. Skittles did a thing with French's mustard. Old Spice Deodorant and Arby's Roast Beef. Did you make that up? Is that a real thing or did you make that up? No, I'll just leave it at that. It's a real thing. Oh, and it wasn't the food collapse. There was also the shoe collabs.

Adidas and Arizona iced tea. Nike and Tiffany sitting in a tree. S-E-L-L-I-N-G. And yet is these out-there collaborations? They're not intended to drive actual sales of the product. For example, that crock-tart shoe, they're only making 200 of them. They're not going to make that much money off of that shoe. The point of these collaborations is to get the stories shared. It's not about the sales. It's about the shares.

These brands just want to be talked about. You know what? That talking about is working. Elf Beauty in Chipotle launched a beauty line together, which resulted in a 50% jump in social media impressions. And that resulted in getting shoutouts on both of their earnings calls. Look at us. We're talking right now about Crocs and Pop-Tarts.

If they didn't do this collaboration, Nick, we wouldn't be talking about either of these two brands. Jack, it's kind of meta, but we're covering this story because they want us to cover this story, but we're covering the story about why they're all wanting us to cover this story. Yeah, they want us to cover this story, but not in the way that we're covering the story. Because wait till you hear our takeaway. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in the marketing department? Collabs are affordable noise.

They get your brand a lot of attention for cheap. Yeah, these brand collaborations have gone from strategic idea to economic necessity. Because according to a survey done by CMO magazine, half of America's chief marketing officers have smaller budgets this year than last year. And with less budget, you'll look for alternatives to that expensive TV commercial or splurging on Facebook ads. And what's less expensive than Facebook and TV ads? Making 200 pairs of Pop-Tart themed clogs.

And then unleashing them on TikTok so your followers will promote it. Collaborations. They're just affordable noise. They maximize attention while minimizing costs. And in this economy, collabs are... King. For our third and final story, China's youth unemployment rate has risen to a record high, so China is just going to stop keeping track. But we are keeping track, and we noticed that we've seen something similar in the past. Yeties, President Xi of China, basically the leader for life.

Jack and I like to say, what she wants, she gets. This spring, Chinese data showed historically low consumer confidence. So China decided to stop publishing that consumer. consumer confidence report. Well, earlier this summer, more negative economic data kept on hitting the headlines. So Chinese authorities ordered economists to put a positive spin on the bad news. And yesterday, we got our final report of China's youth unemployment rates. Interesting thing, yet is Jack said final there? Because that's the last one we're ever going to get from China.

In July, a record 21.3% of Chinese citizens between 16 and 24 years old were unemployed. The Chinese youth unemployment rate has doubled in just the past year. This month, we'll have to guess what the Chinese youth unemployment rate is because China's not going to tell us anymore. Because once again, that was the last one. China's not doing that report anymore. They don't like the data. They're not going to tell the data anymore. Well, funny thing Jack and I thought of when we heard about this Chinese economic report.

We thought of that buddy in high school with the tinted windows. You know what I'm talking about, Jack? Full disclosure, that was me. I was going to say, I got my car. for my brother and he tinted the windows before me. I was going to say, Jack, that wasn't our buddy Timmy, but it feels like one of your older brothers. Yeah, yet he's under President Xi's leadership, China has become more and more opaque. Because increasingly, analysts don't trust Chinese data.

They're worried that China's only showing us the good economic data. We're seeing more and more that China is killing off negative reports in order to shield its citizens from the bad news. But it kind of backfires because it's caused non-citizens outside of China to not trust much of the economic data. Yeti's China's looking like the 1989 Honda with tinted windows I had back in the day with a barely cracked open window. Would you slip money into that window crack for Jack's older brother? Neither will money manage me right now. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in China? China today looks like Japan yesterday. It may never eclipse America's economy. Yeties,

the year Japan built that 1989 Honda that Jack mentioned, that was when the world thought Japan would rise to number one economy in the world. Nick and I were shocked to see this. In 1989, half of the world's 20 most valuable companies, half of them were Japanese companies. We're talking Sony, Toyota, Hitachi. They were the Apple, the Tesla, the Microsoft of their death. Back then, everyone assumed Japan would surpass the United States. But Japan's economy slipped into deflation. And honestly, it hasn't grown in the last 30 years. Well, guess what? China fell into deflation last month, too. And we're surprised that Chinese government admitted it. Besties, China won't share the data they don't like, but we will. China's

economy once the presumed future number one of the world is in the most trouble it's been in years. China's economy has been crushed by zero COVID lockdowns, by a real estate bubble, by those tech crackdowns. That's why 2023 China looks a lot like 1993 Japan. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us for Cevice Wednesday? The Atlanta Braves are now the only publicly traded baseball team. And fan investors will love the stock more than regular investors. For our second story, Crocs and Pop-Tart are collabbing in order to get attention. In this economy, collabs are king. And our third and final story is China.

China decided to stop publishing another economic report because they don't like the data. 2030 China is looking a lot like 1993 Japan. But Yeties, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. First, artificial intelligence jobs are being posted with crazy high salaries. Netflix's top AI job, it's still available. It's going to pay up to 900 grand a year. And second, Home Depot revenue shrank for the second quarter in a row.

Kind of a surprise. Homeowners are cutting back on renovations. You're putting off that expensive new porch. And finally, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen accidentally ate magic mushrooms on her last official trip to check. The mushrooms were cooked, so she didn't hallucinate. Uh-uh. But still. These interest rates are crazy, man.

It's a pretty old age to try out magic mushrooms for the first time. That inflation or schnazberries. These interest rates are crazy. Now, time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Camillo Cruz from lovely Santa Domingo Dominican Republic. Saviche. It's not just a dish, and it's definitely not sashimi. Cevice is history.

Turns out Svece actually originated on the Pacific coast of Peru and Ecuador nearly 3,000 years ago. Even before the Inca's, local tribes prepared fish with the juice of citrus fruits. Archaeologists have actually found evidence in the mummies that were in those areas of citrus and fish in their tummies. That's why the mummy's bodies have smiles on their faces till today. And that's why they were buried with those great napkins too. Saviche, the oldest known prepared dish in all of South America. Yiddies, you look fantastic today. And if you want to help grow the show, the best thing you can do today is turn to a buddy and say, hey, H-Y-H-T-B-O-I.

Have you had the best one yet? If you know, you know. Nick and I, we'll see you tomorrow. Unless CAPTCHA says you're a robot. And before we go, congratulations to Yeti, Sean Shopko, who just adopted a new golden retriever named Finn. And a big, good for you, to Antar and Abigail, who met during their Big Four internship. in New York City and decided to continue to be friends. And Ben Kangos, a long-time legendary market snacker,

has a new job over in Boston as a PM, just outside Boston. And good luck and congratulations to Michelle Jones, who has her first day of school in Salmanac, Illinois. And Maddox Veilman, happy first day of second grade down in Guatemala. And congratulations to Ila Harrington, a baby having her first road trip. And Ashley Miles, enjoy that very first home you just purchased, over in Chicago doing logistics.

Congratulations to Gustavir Constantinos, who was promoted in Denver, Colorado. And a happy birthday to Nick Moen over in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Happy month day to Eureka Chow, who turns one month old today in New York City. And Josh Wilmore, happy birthday down in Charlotte North Kakalaki. And happy birthday to Mark Vincent II, turning not 24, but 25. The real 25 in Colorado. And a happy birthday to Varon over. in St. Louis, Missouri. Happy birthday to Leonard Osby and the Lions Den in Omaha, Nebraska.

And a happy birthday to Halene Leave over in Cohasset by the sea. And where is that, Jack? Just outside Boston. Oh, that's me as my mom, by the way. Love it. That's me his mom. We love me. This is Jack. I own stock of Crocs, Disney, and Netflix, and Nick and I both own stock of Apple and Chipotle. They're not that big Greg Maddox's biceps, by the way.