The Best One Yet - ⛷️ “Wipeout” — Vail’s ski recession. Anthropic’s IPO leak. Man City’s soccer sham. +Probiotic Undies

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

Vail Resorts reported a 12% drop in season pass sales… so they’re using a trick from baseball. Anthropic’s IPO paperwork leaked… it sells something worth $3 for just $1.Man City soccer is guilty of 115 fake deals worth £900M… They’re Performance Enhancing Deals.Plus, why apply skin cream when you can wear skin cream underwear?$UL $MTN $ANTHGrab your Tickets to the IPO Tour: Our In-Person OfferingBoston 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 Wednesday, Sauviche Wednesday, September 30th. And today's pod is the best one yet of this is a T-Boy. The top three pop business news stories you need to know today. And a happy last day of Q3 to all those who celebrate. Are your autumnal goals progressing, Nick? Spice to Pumpkin Spice, Jack.

But we've got three fantastic stories for the coolest show in capitalism. Jack, one of the got in the T-Boy. For our first story, Anthropics IPO paperwork leaked and the numbers are juicy. Because one-third of Anthropics IPO paperwork is about. the end of the world. For our second story, have we hit Peakski? Have we? Because Sales of Vail Resorts' epic pass are down 12% so far this year.

Hold on to your Oakley's besties. We got to wipe out. And our third and final story is Manchester City Football Club of the Primary League. They're guilty of massive financial shenanigans. So Jack and I got to tell you about PEDs. That's performance-enhancing deals. But besties, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. Wonderful mix.

Love your idea and love the mix today, Jack. Pass away your dopket and your toiletry bag, for that matter. Because Jack and I got a trend alert for your cabinet right now. Skin creams are now being built into your undergarments. That's right. Underwear is getting infused with skin care products. It's a new category called Careware. Careware.

It's fashion merged with your pharmacy. We're talking undergarments engineered with fabrics that actively moisturized, nourish, and protect your skin. To sprinkle on some context, clothing companies are putting prebiotics into their boxers, briefs, and thongs that they sell. It's like Neutragina and Victoria's Secret had a baby. Raised by a dermatologist. For example, Underdays makes a real-life probiotic underwear. Silva makes a $500 little black dress with antibacterial materials. One Italian startup selling body suits with hyaloonic infusions.

We don't know what that is, but it sounds like four out of five dermatologists would recommend it. SPF, it's coming for your underwear. And vitamin C serum, it's coming for your slacks. Underday says that the skincare benefits of their clothing last, up to 40 washes, by the way. Are you thinking what I thinking on that, Jack? Yeah, they're encouraging us not to wash our clothing because the moisturizing cream will go away.

Unless you wash your careware, the more you actually care. Yet he's 30 years ago, Under Armour pioneered the concept of performance wear with sweat-wicking t-shirts. Today, wellness baddies are pivoting to carewear to moisturize the epidermis. Nick, before we hit our three stories, I'm going to change into this pair of hydrating collagen socks. Yeah, because beauty is the essence of wetness

and wetness is the essence of beauty, Jack. If you know, you know, Jack, let's hit our three stories. Red it out! 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. 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, Anthropics numbers just leaked. They lost $42 billion last year on just $4.6 billion in revenue.

But Anthropics still wants the biggest IPO of all time. And for the stock market's sake, we hope they get it. But Jack, before they do, one sec, one second, let me just check my phone, my contacts. I'll call a plumber. We got a leak. Anthropics IPO paperwork was leaked to Reuters late on Monday night. Could have been an intentional leak by the company, or could have been a rogue employee who leaked the information. Or could have been rogue AI!

Hey, Claude, what have you been up to at 2 a.m. today? Either way, we couldn't jump into the entire S-1 IPO paperwork, we only got to read the details that Reuters shared. So, we jumped in T-boy style, and we can tell you that Anthropic is targeting a $2 trillion with a T-dollar valuation. That would be twice as big as its valuation from its fundraise just four months ago, And it would beat SpaceX for the biggest IPO ever. But according to the leaked IPO paperwork, Anthropic lost $42 billion last year. Jack, Sprinkle on the context. $42 billion is the value of seven lifts.

And that's how much Anthropic lost in just one year. And now we should point out that's mostly accounting charges, right, Jack? True. The operating loss, which is a better reflection of the business, was only $8 billion. Still huge, though, it is twice as big a loss as SpaceX had. But in fairness, Anthropics revenue grew by 12. X in 2025. Not 12%. That's fast. 12x. Like that's fast. One million dollar became 12 million dollars. It's faster than any other company this size. But, and I'm sorry to sprinkle on another

but here, for every $1 in revenue of clawed subscriptions, it cost Anthropic $1.60 of compute and $2.75 of total cost. So if you're selling something for one third of the cost to produce it, Njia? Of course revenues are growing fast. Yeah, it's like if Best Buy was selling their $100 gift cards for only $30, $30,000. Spoiler, they'd probably sell a lot of them. I would buy a bunch of those gift cards. Girl Scouts don't give away the cookies for free. That's basically a cloud subscription based on the leaked IPO paperwork.

But besties if Jack and I were writing a college thesis paper on Anthropics IPO paperwork, here would be our thesis statement. Anthropic is a series of contradictions. But none of the contradictions are bigger than the dreams versus the doom. The dreams versus the doom. Because get this, only 48 pages of this S-1 IPO paperwork is talk about the actual business. 80 pages were dedicated to the risks. 80 pages, one third. Now, one risk that they mentioned is one that we've heard many times before.

That their AI poses catastrophic or existential risks to humanity. We've never actually seen that in Wall Street paperwork, but yeah, yeah, we've heard them talk about that before. That's old news. But Anthropic also told us in their paperwork that their AI could show self-preserving behaviors, like resisting efforts by its master to shut them down. I mean, Jack, that sounds like a villain in a Spider-Man movie. That actually sounds like the plot of Mission Impossible Mine.

It does, and it's also like the SNL skit from this past weekend. Claude, it has a second self, like Gallum. Now, interestingly, the other anthropic risks were financial risks. We learned that just two customers make up 25% of revenue. And we learned that another financial risk is $518 billion. That's the amount anthropic plans to spend on compute in the next 10 years, with 80% of those compute contracts, non-cancellable. And yet another financial risk is that,

philanthropists will be in charge of the company after they IPO. They didn't label this a risk, but we are, because Anthropic plans to have their seven co-founders hold 50.1% of the voting stock post-IPO. What that means, well, Wall Street won't be in charge. The philanthropist founders will be in charge. And those founders have pledged 80% of their personal anthropic equity will go to charitable causes. Anthropics stock, it's going to UNICEF. Bloomberg says Anthropics IPO could happen in October.

Reuters says November after the midterms is the soonest. Anthropic will go IPO. But Sam Malman said earlier this month that Open AI won't even IPO this year. Given everything going on with safety, Sam said. So maybe Anthropic won't either. And of course, there's always the 10% chance that ChatsyPT destroys humanity before we even get there. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for all our buddies curious about the Anthropic IPO leak? AI could be popped by a domino effect. An Anthropics IPO is the biggest domino. Yeties, Anthropic hopes to beat SpaceX as the biggest IPO in history. But what if they fail?

Orrin postponed their IPO yesterday. It was the third IPO to get postponed this month. And if Anthropic postpones or does an IPO but has to cut the price of their stock in order to sell the stuff, then the tech companies that are investors in Anthropic might have to write down their holdings and take huge losses. We're talking to Amazon, Alphabet, Nvidia, Microsoft, all big investors and big vendors with huge compute contracts with this company. They'd all be in trouble if Anthropics valuation gets slashed. Oh, an Open AIs valuation would certainly drop too, which would then then, cause Amazon, Microsoft, and Vidaa and softbank stocks to plummet because they would announce losses

on their open AI stock and their cancel compute contracts with Open AI and Anthropic. Yeties, because of the circular financing of the AI industry, when one giant falls, they'll all fall. That's why we're talking like this really fast and stuff, because we're not saying AI is a bubble and we're not saying it is going to pop. But if AI is a bubble, and if it does pop, we'll see a domino effect of losses. And a botched Anthropic IPO would be the biggest domino of all. For our second story, the 25-26 ski season was a disaster. Vail Resorts?

They just confirmed. But Vail's got a plan to save skiing. It involves Disney and the Boston Red Sox. Oh, Vail Resorts. Kind of hated in in Vermont? Completely hated in Vermont. Because Vail Resorts acquired Stowe, one of our best mountains, and immediately started charging 30 bucks for parking.

Come on. Nothing gurds, jacks, waterproof loins like schlep into the lift because the only parking space he wanted to pay for was 300 feet away. Yeties, we're talking about Vale, the $5 billion ski glomerate known for launching the epic pass. One pass to all 42 resorts. That was the promise for about $1,000 a year. Ski bums were bearish, but Wall Street was bullish. And for years, Voldemort, I mean Vail resorts, added more and more skiers to the same finite number of mountains. But poor snow in the Rockies, where Vale has eight resorts, broke the Carvers back last winter. Publicated-crated company, they just reported that profits fell by almost half last year because of it.

The worst part, bad snow last year is causing a hangover for season pass sales this year. Here's the hero stat. The number of epic passes, Vail sold in Q2, fell by 12%. Third straight year of declines. What does that mean? There's probably going to be fewer skiers and riders on Vail's mountains this season. Although a few good dumps early in the season, that could change the financial forecast from gnarly to opposite of gnarly. Whatever the ski jargon is these days for that, Jack. I'm not sure 100%. But yet, as we jumped in, T-Boy style to Vail's earnings report, and there's one particular type of skier who's bailing this year and not buying the pass.

It's me! It's the Fair Weather fans! Yeah, we haven't bought the passes. It's the Christmas MLK and President's Day weekend crowd. The kind of guys who are happy with one or two weekends, I don't know if we'll have enough time kind of a thing. On the other hand, me, a local, we're still buying passes because we're committed to skiing rain or shine. Although, Jack, you see what the Cloudflare CEO did because he was so mad about Park City Resort, which is owned by Vail. The CEO of Cloughfare offered $500 million to buy back Park City from Vale because he's so unhappy with how it's being operated.

Okay, but back to the business model here. Tourist skiers, though, the ones like me who visit once or twice a year, we're walking away right now. Because last season was such a disappointment. And that's bad news for Vail because Torres skiers are the splurging skiers. They are the profit puppies. You meant to say we are the profit puppies, Nick, because locals like me, we pack a thermos with hot soup. we bought out of a can from the grocery store. We pour hot piping water

atop our cup of ramen for free lunch. Okay, first of all, if you need money, just ask me, Jack. I'll lend it to you anytime. But second of all, can I tell you what a day on the slopes looks like for me and why Vail Resorts loves it? The whole day is Apreyski. First, us tourist skiers, we buy the $80 hot dog tower to complement the 11 a.m. Martini lunch.

You know those hot dogs cost $4 at Costco? I don't know. I wasn't paying attention to the bill, Jack. But then at 1 p.m., we do the Aprey hot chocolate, and then the 145 p.m. snack time some more, and then we call it a deck. Now, that is the type of splurgeon customer that Vail thinks they're going to lose this season. Is the fondue chocolate fountain still open? All right, I got to go, Jack. One secers.

So to help Vail attract back these tourist fair weather skiers, one activist investor has nominated VIP to the board. Yeah, believe it or not, it's Bob Chatea. Remember him? He ran Disney parks for five years before becoming CEO of Disney right before the pandemic began. So Bob Chaypack is now on board with Vail Rubek. resorts to represent the jerrys out there. The tourist skiers, the ones who flew in from Chicago for the long weekend. But they also recommended adding retired Olympic gold medalist skier, Peekaboo Street, to rep the locals on the Vail board. Fix the damn lifts, Vail! Fix the damn lifts! So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Vail Resorts? What happened to baseball stadiums is now happening to ski resorts.

Distractions. That's what we're talking about. For when the play on the field, when the product on the field, kind of stinks. With skiing as with baseball, the experience could stink because of things outside anyone's control. In baseball, the team might get blown out. In skiing, there might be no snow at all. So the job of modern ski resorts, as with modern baseball teams, is to reduce the risk of a bad experience by offering customers something else to do. For baseball, every stadium needs great food and drinks, entertaining PA announcers, and dancing mascots on the field. For skiing, every resort needs improved restaurants and bars, maybe add an ice rink or a mountain coat. and improve the live music situation.

Build an indoor water park if you can afford it, why not? Baseball invested in stuff that wasn't baseball. Now, ski resorts are investing in stuff that's not skiing. Well, Vail CEO did say he's learning from Delta and United, premiumizing the experience for Taurus skiers with concierge services, bells and whistles, hot chocolate fountains. Hot chocolate fondue fountains. Exactly.

Because what happened in baseball stadiums is happening in ski resorts. Now a quick word from our sponsor. For our third and... And final story, Manchester City, one of the richest soccer teams in Europe, is guilty of 115 counts of financial violations. It's the new PEDs in sports. Performance enhancing deals. Okay, besties, here's our Mount Rushmore.

You got the Lakers, the Cowboys, the Rangers, and the Yankees. And when Nick says Mount Rushmore, he means from the movie Richie Rich. Yeah. Remember they built their own Mount Rushmore if they're like rich ancestors? That's the Mount Rushmore, Richie Rich of American Pro sports teams. But across the pond in Europe, you don't need to bend it like Beckham. You try to make money like Man City. Man City, Manchester City, the ultimate Nouveau-Riche team, right, Jack?

Man City flaunts their wealth like a young Jay Gatsby. Because back in 2008, Manchester City became the second Premier League team acquired with Petro dollars. The Abu Dhabi royal family bought Man City and still owns them today. They got Gucci, they got Rolex, they got Man City. Today, that big oil money has helped them win eight Premier leagues since acquiring the club in 2008. David Beckham, yeah, you can keep your right foot and your left foot, because Man City, their arms are full of trophies. Man City managed to acquire the best coach in soccer. Pep Gordial.

And the best player in Europe, Erling Holland. But they did so by cheating. And here's the news. The Premier League announced Tuesday that the world's wealthiest soccer club was guilty of the biggest financial scandals since they gave the Goldie Gloves. Manchester City artificially inflated the revenue with fake sales of more than 900 million pounds. That's a yellow card, guys. Found new and secretive ways to funnel money to players and to the owners. Actually, it's a red card, guys.

Now, we should point out, the Premier League is not like a nation state. Right. They have rules, not laws. But they did find Man City guilty of 115 rules over nine years. Exhibit A, the coach of Man City had a double contract to both coach the team and to advise the team. Isn't coaching the team advising the team? Pretty sure, Jack. Exhibit B, part of the Jersey sponsorship was paid by Etihad Airlines, but part of it was secret.

paid by the owner of the team. And it wasn't disclosed. Exhibit C, payments were made through a mysterious Sparkle Glow Holding Company on the Islands of Mauritius. I don't know what's more suspicious. The island of Marichis or Sparkle Glow Holding Company. It does sound like a Bond villain's move, Jack. No, we should point out a funny side note on the stock market.

Manchester United, the local rival, is a publicly traded club, and their stock rose 2% on news that they're cross-town rivals in trouble. Investors are bullish on man you right now. But yet, these shenanigans reveals a difference between American sports and European sports. Big difference in the business model. You see, in the U.S. to keep things competitive, most pro leagues have a salary cap. $300 million of salary. That's how much you can pay the players.

We have that so that the tiny city of Green Bay, Wisconsin, has a chance to beat the New York Giants. But over in Europe, the cap of each team is not the same, is it Jack? Each club's salary cap is based on that club's revenue situation. So, the more money you make as a team, the more money you're allowed to spend on the town. Which explains why Man City created fake deals to show fake revenue for nine years. A billion dollars of fake revenue over those nine years. Because the more money they claimed to make, the more money they were allowed to spend on their talent. Now Man City is appealing and the Premier League hasn't announced sanctions or a punishment yet.

And Erling Holland has no comment. Nor does his Lamborghini, Jack. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in pro sports? The trend in front office sports is PEDs, performance-enhancing Deals. Deals. Bessies, you know about performance-enhancing drugs. Like, that characterized a whole previous era of pro-sports rule breaking. Steroids, syringes, H.G.H. The kind of stuff that got A-Rod suspended and got Jose Canseco famous. Well, the present era of sports rule breaking, it isn't related to drugs. It's related to deals. It started two years ago when Larry Ellison

paid the number one high school football recruit $12 million to quit LSU and go to Michigan instead. And last month, the NBA punished the LA Clippers for fake endorsement deals to circumvent their salary cap. And now Man City has found guilty of 115 fake deals to circumvent their salary rules. Basties money and infects everything, including sports. The new PED, performance-enhancing deals. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us for Saviche Wednesday? Anthropic has almost $3 a cost for each $1.00 of revenue, but they still want to IPO for $2 trillion. What a leak.

And we hope they do, because Anthropic is a $1.000. a huge AI domino. For our second story, Vail Resort sold fewer epic passes for the third straight season, a 12% drop after last year's bad winter. Nnarly quarter. So, like baseball stadium,

ski resorts are investing in distractions. And our third and final story is Man City. They were found guilty of 115 counts of rule-breaking PEDs, performance-enhancing deals. Deals. Teams are cheating in their bank accounts to win on the field.

But Gussies, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. First, the new arms race in AI, it's cuteness. OpenAI launched dots on Tuesday, which are AI agents with very cute avatars. Adorable, even as they take my data. Just like Meta's muse, OpenAI's dots are going to work in the background for you 24-7. And just like Meta's muse, Open AI is trying to overcome your distrust with something adorable. It's the Labu-Booification of tech. And second, the Senate just passed a bill to rein in college sports payments and transfers. They're limiting the number of times players.

can transfer to a different university and limiting a college career to four seasons, basically bringing back some of the old rules of college football. And Jack, it gives the NCAA anti-trust exemption to enforce the rules. Critics are mad, though, because it caps pay or play from the universities, but it does not cap the pay of coaches or athletic directors. And finally, Gucci's got a whole bunch of fresh drama coming at a Milan fashion week. With sales down 50% in the last three years, Gucci is trying to appeal to a mass audience. So Gucci's launching their first pair of sneakers. Gucci, been not making running shoes for you. But that is also

the first ever Gucci product that says, made in China on the label. So Italians are going full mama me on this. Freaking the country out. Sounds like Fuji to me. Time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Laura, who I ran into near the ferry

building by our T-boy studio in San Francisco. She pointed out the surprise tech gadget that's winning right now. It's one of the oldest. Wired headphones with a wire. They had a big pandemic moment. and now they are rising again. Wired headphone sales were most 9% last year and they're up 20% so far

this year. And Vos just released their first wireless headphones in 10 years. Gen Z likes the nostalgia. Boomers like that you can plug them in and you don't lose them. And paranoid millennials just think Bluetooth can be a security risk. But Nick, do you remember what Apple said when they removed the headphone jack from the iPhone?

They said that it takes courage. Does it take courage to bring the wire back? You move, John Turnus. Your move. Yides, you look fantastic today jack you are glown over there probably because we're going to do some app pre-skiing you know what that is this is app break but before that's exactly what it is and i'm so glad you're into it with me let's get the chocolate fondue found it going yet if you haven't yet drop down to give us a five-star rating and review that really helps us grow the show and leave a comment on who you'd prefer to ski

with ski with me or appre with nick jack's freezing cold and i have three hot chocolates before 830 a.m Happy birthday to Legendary Yeti David Fish, turning 40 with a new chirofactor business over in Illinois. And happy birthday to Cumberland's finest Garrett Verklin from Rhode Island. He's listening to the best idea yet with his dad on the way to soccer. And Catherine Adelstein is celebrating her 30th anniversary of her 26th birthday while walking Bailey at San Diego. Hasn't missed an episode yet. And happy birthday to Cassie Fell. In the Marina District of San Francisco, she was at her live show just turned 26.

And her sister Samantha getting married. Happy one year wedding anniversary to Chuck and Lindsay Mellick. and Anthony and Lainey are also celebrating a one-year wedding anniversary. And congratulations to Quate Johnson for the one-year anniversary of his fintech startup, the third AI. And to anyone else, celebrating something today, make it a T-Boy. Celebrate the wins. This is Jack. I own stock of Amazon, Disney, and Lyft, and Nick and I both own some SpaceX. I own just one share.