The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - The Week: Iran, Brexit, SpaceX, and the Business of Sports

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

George Hahn connects the dots across the week's biggest stories: whether the Iran ceasefire can hold, what Britain's political turmoil says ten years after Brexit, why SpaceX is already facing a reality check, and how the World Cup is reshaping the economics of media. We’d love your feedback as we build this show! Let us know what you think: [e-mail]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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mattered and what it all means. I'm George and it's Friday, June 26. Today, another Iran deal that may already be falling apart. Why Britain can't seem to keep a prime minister. The biggest IPO in history gets a reality check. And finally, how the World Cup is rewriting the economics of media. Let's get into it. Last weekend, news broke of what appeared to be a ceasefire deal between Iran. and the U.S., a memorandum of understanding, to be specific. On Monday's raging moderates, Jessica Tarlov tried to find a silver lining in this quote-unquote deal. I'm trying to be a little glass half full, at least for a few minutes, because I don't know,

I'm just like fundamentally a positive person, and it's kind of exhausting just talking about like every way this has gone wrong. And I think that we're now fully in a place where we just have to ignore what President Trump is saying and doing, like that it has nothing to do with the reality on the ground. Iran was going to push the envelope and they did, you know, opening, closing the Strait of Hormuz, saying they'd left the talks when they were actually secretly still dealing. And if we did want to have like a little bit of rainbow news, I guess, or positive news, the Qataris and the Pakistanis issued a joint. statement after yesterday's talks, that had some good stuff in it. I mean, if this is true, it could all fall apart tomorrow, of course, but they established this high-level committee that agreed on a roadmap towards reaching a final deal, agreed to the creation of a deconfliction

cell for Lebanon that will ensure the adherence to the termination of military operations. You know, technical talks still progressing. But the Iranians were part of that as well, so it wasn't just the Qataris and the Pakistanis. And if they're talking, that's a very much. better than bombing? Scott, however, came away with the opposite conclusion. So I think neither the IRGC or Hezboa or Israel have gotten the memo on the memo. I think all of them see a vested interest in continuing to fight. I think Netanyahu is constantly on a war footing.

And I go back to the same thing. I think the world would be a much better place once Netanyahu and Trump leave the world stage. but Netanyahu is on a war footing. He sees his political survival based on his promise to annihilate or destroy his enemies. He sees this as a unique opportunity. I don't think he has any intention of stopping. I think Trump will blame him and the IRGC will blame Israel as well for continuing to bomb Hezbollah, such that they have an excuse or kind of a red herring or a false flag to say the ceasefire has been violated. I don't think they have any intention of complying with half the conditions that Trump is trying to outline to save face, and they will use the ongoing conflict in Lebanon and Israeli strikes as an excuse that, in fact, the ceasefire that we, quote unquote, the West, Israel and America have not lived up to their promises. I don't think Beebe has any intention of stopping. I don't think the IRGC has any intention of stopping. And the notion that Trump thinks,

that the IRGC are good actors and have any desire to have a ceasefire with any real agreements, with any teeth, and that Netanyahu is not fighting for his political life. I just, Bibi didn't even see a copy of the memo, supposedly. Whether you land closer to Jess or Scott's take, the stakes are hard to ignore. The conflict has already cost 13 American lives, roughly $132 billion by Moody's estimate, and pushed up energy prices that continue to ripple through the broader economy. This week also marked 10 years since Britain voted to leave the European Union. Since then, the U.K. has cycled through six prime ministers,

struggled with weak growth, and watched public opinion turn sharply against Brexit. According to a poll by the ECFR, two-thirds of British voters across party lines believe Britain's decision to leave the EU had a negative impact on the country. On Monday, Prime Minister Kier Starrmer announced his resignation. This week, Scott sat down with John Byrne Murdoch, chief data reporter at the Financial Times, and asked him, what went wrong in the UK? There's going to be so many answers to a question like this, but certainly two big ones that I would point to immediately are,

one is the sort of planning and permitting system here, which really makes countries like the US, where that's also a conversation, look like rookies. You know, the restrictions on house building in the UK are extraordinary. There are huge areas of land around London, around Manchester, around Birmingham, our major cities, where you are simply not allowed to build,

called the Green Belt. We apply similar restrictions, or similarly severe restrictions to building infrastructure. we have some of the highest infrastructure costs in the world and the longest delays in the world affecting transport, affecting energy, that gives us some of the highest energy prices in the developed world. All of these make it harder for people, companies, you name it,

to locate in the UK or in the most productive parts of the UK. The second factor, I would say, is an over-centralisation of how things are done in the country. So one of the things I think the US does pretty well is state and local governments can raise their own taxes. That gives them strong incentives to build to innovate, to try and run things better

than the neighbouring state. In the UK, we by and large don't have that. Overwhelmingly, things, even at the local level, are effectively run by the central government. That discourages one city to try to do things differently from another. Most of the tax-raising mechanisms, again, happen in a similar way. So local governments in the UK

are similarly not in terms. incentivized to build housing to raise revenue in the way they are in the U.S. So I think permitting and centralization are probably the biggest two I would point to. And if you think this is just a British story, Ed Elson would disagree. Here's his take from Tuesday's markets episode. In the name of Britannia, the UK voted to leave. Sure, it would be complicated, but in the eyes of the voters, they were better off on their own. How wrong they turned out to be. Ten years on, almost 60% of Britain say they shouldn't have left the EU. Meanwhile, GDP per capita is as much as 8% lower than it would have been without Brexit, and business investment is as much as 18% lower. Now,

why am I talking about all of this? Well, for one, I grew up in the UK, so I care about their issues, but more importantly, the same decision that ruined the UK economy that destroyed the nation's politics for possibly decades to come, that same dilemma. is now playing out in America. More specifically, the dilemma of tariffs or no tariffs. And while the technical details are different from Brexit, the thrust of that policy is the same. We'll be right back after the break.

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Framer.com slash PropG rules and restrictions may apply. Support for the show comes from Section. Listen to this. According to new data from Section, 32% of us think we're good at using AI, and 4% of people actually are. That's why companies are struggling to get value from AI. The workforce is struggling with AI,

and they're not getting the help they need. Don't be the kind of leader who brags about AI at the company meeting then blames layoffs on being AI powered. Instead, give your teams the kids, coaching and resources to support what they need to work with their AI. Help them augment their work with AI so they have time to work on more interesting challenges. If you need help with this, you should talk to Section. So Disclosure, I am an investor in Section, and the reason I invested is I think the most underinvested part of AI is what I call the adoption layer, and that

is helping companies upskill their employees so they can better leverage AI in a thoughtful way. Section is doing this work with companies including Nike, Autodesk, NASCAR, ABMBEV, and Publacy. Get in touch at sectionaI.com. That's S-C-C-T-I-O-N-A-I-D-com to learn more. Welcome back. Last year, the entire UK stock market raised about $2 billion. This year, three American companies, Open AI, Anthropic, and SpaceX, are set to raise. raise 150 billion. And the most extreme of the three had a wild week. SpaceX went public as the biggest IPO in history, popped nearly 30% on day one, and then gave most of it back. Ed made a prediction two weeks ago. Half of it already came true. Before SpaceX went public, I predicted that The stock would rise at least 25% on the first day of trading.

That it did. The stock hit $176 on day one, up almost 30%, and then continued to rise the following week, hitting a high of nearly $220 per share. So check. Part two of my prediction, however, was that over the next six months, the stock would get cut in half. Why? Because I believed and still believe that the valuation makes no sense, and also because billions of dollars worth of lockups would soon expire,

thus allowing early investors to sell their shares, thus putting downward pressure on the stock. That hasn't happened yet. However, we are starting to see warning signs. The stock has already fallen as much as 30% in just a few days. It also shed $400 billion in market cap in a single day, which was the second largest one-day wipeout in stock market history. And while it did recover some losses yesterday, it's still 22% off of its highs. Keep in mind, this is all happening before any of the lockups have even expired, which means that the stock has yet to go through the real test, which is when thousands of investors will choose whether to hold the stock at an unreasonable valuation or sell it and then go buy themselves a house or a boat or perhaps even

a plane. I know what my money's on. Speaking of concentrated value, there's one corner of the economy where the money isn't fleeing. It's pouring in, actually. The World Cup is here, and this week it was on full display in America's backyard. On this week's Proff G-plus deep dive, Scott spoke with Axios media correspondent Sarah Fisher about where attention currently lives. I cover the business of women's sports and a lot of events around this. The valuation increase on women's soccer teams has been astronomical. And the reason being, a lot of investors understand now that the men's sports, that there's value there. And so if you want to get in now, you can't get in on the starting floor.

But with the women's teams you can and the premium is outstanding. There's a reason why Bob Eiger and Willow Bay invested in their local LA women's team, right? And you're not a men's sport. Because if you're somebody who's a money person, this is where your biggest return on investment is likely going to come. And we're seeing that play out too with the women's sports media rights. The National Women's Soccer League, having distribution deals with scripts, with CBS, with Amazon, with ESPN. A few years ago, that would have never been possible. You take a look at the WNBA, their rights agreement alongside the NBA values them at like tenfold.

what they used to be. So yes, MLS, huge investment opportunity. But the NWSL, National Women's Soccer League, is where all the money is going right now. Sports may be one of the last businesses where audiences are getting bigger instead of smaller. But for Scott, this week's World Cup wasn't really about media rights or billion dollar valuations. He's been in a team Scotland jersey all week. Here's why. I have almost no interest in sports. Quite frankly, I'm not really a big fan of football, but I've become a big fan. Why is that? Because my sons are into it.

And the mistake I made as a young father was believing that my kids would come out of the womb interested in World War II documentaries and CrossFit. They're not. And being a dad means giving in to, quite frankly, I don't want to say losing yourself. but giving into their interests. And that's not to say you can't maintain yours, but the reality is my kids just aren't into what I'm into. And being a dad and being a present dad means registering the blessing of them being into something, that's a blessing.

I think the worst thing that can happen to your kids is that, quite frankly, they don't develop a passion or an interest in much of anything. And I do think that happens sometimes. Like nothing just seems to excite them. So if you're fortunate enough to have kids that get into something, then you really want to lean into it as well. And from an early age, my kids,

even when we were living in the U.S., got just super into Premier League and European football in the World Cup. So I took my son to, and I realized this is a story of privilege, but there's my land acknowledgement. I went to Russia, I went to Qatar, took my book, boys. I had no desire really to go to, what is that true, I had desired to spend time with my boys. I didn't have desire to go to see the World Cup, if you will. I've come to love it. It's fantastic, but the reason I am going to put on a kill tomorrow night in March is I'm going to get to do it

with my son, and I'm going to feel closer to him, and we're going to remember it the rest of our lives. If I didn't have kids, I wouldn't be marching with the Tartan Army tomorrow. So the blessing is the following. The blessing is finding something your kids are interested in and acknowledging that they may not be what you're into and then leaning into and pouring flame and gasoline on what they're into. Some of it is strange. I have found all of a sudden I'm trying to get interested in Pokemon cards, which is not easy for me. The worst superhero films, Jesus Christ, the seventh circle of hell, but I will go to them. This is a long-winded way of saying, as a dad, the bad news is it's not about you. The good news is it's not about you.

And you're going to find over time that is actually quite liberating and quite relaxing to find things, to make things important to you that are dictated by other people's interests. I've actually found that quite liberating in a weird way, somewhat relaxing. Anyways, go Team Scotland. We'll be off next week with a long holiday weekend, but the following week we will be back with a fresh edition of the week from Prop G Media, breaking down what mattered and what it all means. I'm George Hahn.

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