Meta’s Prediction Market App, Europe vs. Big Tech, and Hollywood’s Comeback

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Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine in the Vat's Media. The podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. Wow, that was really good.

And we're recording this episode in front of a live audience here at the AdWeeCows at CanLions International Festival of Creativity. Is that what it's called? All right. Fine.

We're doing that. Welcome everybody. So let's start Scott. We haven't seen each other at all, correct? Not even slightly.

I know it's a great can. I mean, it's great can for both of us that we don't have to see each other. I brought my children. We've having a lovely time there just in the Mediterranean this morning.

“And I've had a lovely time with them except for the heat, but how is your condo?”

Can't. Sorry, Jesus Christ. I love it here. But I don't know if you saw that crazy drone show. Yeah, that was a car go.

It's actually the word is, and I can validate this. It's an alien craft. It's an alien species of women who are no joke or abducting guys with enormous text. So you're safe.

But also, just you know, this spaceship is incredible.

Oh, yeah. Hello friends. That took like five seconds to get to a penis joke. Now, highly complimentary one to yourself, which is inaccurate, but nonetheless, don't ask me my nickname in the fraternity, just don't.

Pray pod. Yeah. Try pod. Anyway, sorry. It's twa.

It's twa pod. Tray pod is very pod.

“It's like you should you should take intentions or gestures with the intentions that”

they're made or that they're intended or that you know what I'm saying. Yeah, okay. No, I don't. All right, let me just, how is your can gone? How's it gone?

It's great.

First time I've left my hotel.

Okay. All right. When I was there, I just have to work here and like, you know, me with Martin Sorrell. I'd have lunch with him and he'd take calls and just one minute, one minute. And now it's like Mr. Beast is the man.

Yeah. Yeah, I love I absolutely love it. Talk a little bit about what's what do you think are the big takeaways so far? So hands down the biggest trend is the crater economy. There's 500 here this year, there were 400 last year.

It used to be, it's sort of ironic that this is meant to be a gathering. It's 13,000 people from 90 countries. It's meant to be a gathering to celebrate the industry. But the industry hasn't yet recognized there no longer the protagonist. In that the industry, if you think of it in the means of production, talent used to

command 10 or 15% of the total revenue. There's in between there were these means of production or modes and add agency, distribution, studio, makeup, unions, a cable going into people's homes. And now people with these few platforms that command a disproportionate margin, they do really well.

But you have thousands, it's no longer Madison Avenue, it's a bunch of studios.

John Renn, they own the cassette, now it's some creator who's talking about food. So it really has, there's a distribution from institutions to individuals. But AI last year was what do we do with AI, now it's how do we organize a company around AI, how do we get an ROI there?

“I think there's been people have come to the conclusion that AI is all chip and no salsa”

and the creativity has never been more important.

For social media, it takes people to the extremes. AI takes everyone to the middle and it's very moderated and so creativity has never been more important. Remember, AI was going to produce commercials, there's more designers now at IBM as a percentage of their employment and creatives and there was last year.

So creativity appears. Yeah, I've noticed this sort of follow-up in the AI, dementia that was here last year. Yeah. That's everywhere actually, when everyone's sort of coming to the conclusion that they're not really clear what efficacy this stuff has instead of having to, I mean, the drone

show did do AI and it was not AI, it was, it wasn't artificial intelligence. It was something else. They had another word, what it was, art and intelligence instead of artificial intelligence. Yeah, and the other big trend is sports. Yeah.

There wasn't a sport beach here. A sport it really is the cultural origin now and it's one of the, I mean,

“the biggest, I think the two biggest stories taking place right now, one's positive and”

one's negative and the things we'll be talking about in two weeks, I like to predict what will be the biggest business stories that are happening.

The biggest cultural story would be the coming together that basically the world cup is

doing what the UN was supposed to do and these wonderful creators in this content that makes this feel better about the world when we really needed it, we needed to feel better about America on Waffle House and how wonderful Norwegians in the Scottish are. No team scallon against Brazil could happen tomorrow night, that is the best cultural story unfolding right now.

The biggest story that will, that's taking place right now, you're going to see that the predictions markets have a scary fucking amount of betting on the world cup right now, mostly from young men who's prefrontal cortices is very immature at a prone to addiction. I think that's the biggest story playing out right now. They're going to see that one third, two thirds of young men in the United States bet on

the world cup and you're going to see Pauli Markin and Kalshi basically show the kind of numbers they get Goldman and JP Morgan saying we're ready to go public. Yeah, you did see, of course, Zuckerberg waiting into it. He's going to start a predictions market. He is, which is called arena, which I mean, did he ever have an idea he thought of himself

that he didn't, the thief?

“Yeah, but that's the key to shareholder value.”

The innovator, the first iPod, the first computer, the first social media network, who's on my space? I mean, it's, it's the second mouse that gets the cheese, apples and apples. Well, do you imagine, because he tried it on the number of ways they tried to do a dating service to remember the Facebook dating service that didn't go anywhere or the Facebook

this, the Facebook that, is this a good area, you're just, it's an important area right now, but they're also under enormous scrutiny by, even in the, by U.S. standards are under enormous scrutiny in the U.S. all these markets. They're getting pushed back all across the world from a regulatory point of view. And then Mark, whose reputation is just, even this week, up even more tarnished, we talked

about it on the last episode, because Trump essentially called him a sucker. He did, he did essentially, and was accurate. And you think it's a great time to wait into this area for a company like Facebook, or do you think these are inevitable companies that these better happening? Yeah, I think so if I were the head of corporate development at meta, I would take a two to

three percent delusion and take 40 to 60 billion dollar flyer on either calcium or poly market as opposed to trying to compete with them and go from letter A to F. But we use the term innovation really promiscuously in terms of shareholder value, it's not the innovator. The innovator in the pioneers get mud on their face and arrows in their back.

That's the number two, Apple has never invented anything.

What they do is they come in and they commercialize it and they do a better job of it. If I were met on, I'm not, and I would be rushing to get things done before, a democrat takes the White House and actually starts trying to break up companies to get to what we need to bring affordability down as the rents being charged on advertisers and consumers, and parents gets higher and higher as we let these companies consolidate with no regulation.

But I would, I would be looking at everything and if I wanted to get into that market, I would pick up one of those two players for 20 to 60 billion, which at this point would be a minor delusion. Is it a particularly good thing for their corporate image to go into an area that's under? It's clearly going to be under attack in the next two years. I don't think they give a shit. They don't think they're worried about their image.

Yeah. I mean, there's, as we sit here, there's a bunch of 14-year-old self-cutting

So I don't think they're very willing to endure hits to their image, I don't think that's

their first priority. So they will go, this is an area they should go into.

“Very image. The only thing that fucking matters is Mark Zuckerberg keeps delivering unbelievable”

shareholder returns. That's the only image that matters in a capitalist America with no regulation. And we can sit here and talk about purity tests. No one gives it fuck. All right. Well, in Europe, let me just send the, they're trying to break up US big tech here in France, the budget minister called for a country to break free of American systems. Sort of on trend with the Europeans feeling the American century is over, which I think is very clear. They've stepped up

in a Ukraine. They've sort of pulled away from the US. You have Georgia, Maloney, every day, insulting Trump, which is really enjoyable. And the EU just rolled out a new sovereignty package

to boost homegrown tech, a very difficult thing to do. Google Microsoft, and Amazon,

control 70% of Europe's cloud market, and 80% of European software spend goes to US companies. You know, it also has to deal with these climate goals that they have in data center. lobbyists say Europeans power grid isn't ready to fuel advanced AI. Infrastructure will need to lean on new gas plants to stay competitive, which is a big issue in the United States. And actually gaining enormous amount of traction with voters, 100%.

Europe's biggest tech CEO's want to say in shaping EU policy, and you've called the European tech creators is pushing the EU to cut red tape loose and merger rules the way the US and China cut back theirs. Is that something you see happening? This is not the direction Europe had gone, and it has had much less success, obviously. All these US companies, whether it's open AI, or inthropic, or all US, the latest basket of them, whether they're going to make it or not,

or US companies. Yeah. So America used to be the uncle we showed up who is a noxious. You showed up to the European, you know, picnic of noxious but nice, paid for your kid's tuition, generally hard was in the right place. Now the uncle showing up is on math and he's doing his karate moves and he's hitting on, and he's hitting on underage girls at the part. I mean,

we have become so unreliable and quite frankly just gross that the US finally come to the realization,

we can't count on this guy any longer. And it can go one or two ways. The good way is that they figure out a way. Germany, I think, 30, 40% debt to GDP, Netherlands, they need to probably go into some deficit spending ramp up their technology investment in their own military, sport their own companies, Mr. All, vertical aerospace, Daniel Act is in a big investor in a European defense company. I think that would be good. If they use this as yet another excuse to slow down their thorough

brads with overregulation, which is what Europe does, you'll create, be righteous, worried about the environment, and we'll kick your ass and miss your holder standpoint. And that's the story of Europe's thoughtful regulation that gets in the way of every company killing it. And America makes the mistake of underregulating, Europe makes the mistake of overregulating, and you'd rather be the former, because then you have the capital in the strength, the fund of navy, when you do get a good leader

“in place, economic growth. I mean, it's kind of everything. You have to have the UK has, it's hard”

in the right place, super smart, and they can't do any of this shit because the economy's not growing. So there's a medium. If they use it as an excuse to support, to force companies, to purchase their own models, support, European born native internet, e-commerce, AI companies, defense companies great. If they use it as yet another excuse to increase regulation, we're talented entrepreneurs and capital directors. Right, right. But is it even possible at this point? Because these companies

are sort of barreling to IPOs, despite the fact that, for example, SpaceX is really taken yet another fall. We talked on Monday about this, but it took a decent fall again. It's still up from the IPO. It's trading at 120 times a revenue is natural for their problems. Yeah, I get that, but do you see it? Is there a way to catch up in any way for other parts of the world to do so or these the companies that will? Well, your past some great companies, and I'm actually in my

“prediction. I'm going to talk about, I think the hottest IPO of the digital of this month is actually”

going to be a European company and I'll talk about that in predictions. Like they have some, they have some great companies that I do think there's going to be a lot of talent. The team of the best players wins and I think you're going to see a trend where the most talented people in Europe, you step one goal, get out. It's like my homeland or my father's homeland, my dad used to joke, what have the most talented people in Scotland have in common? They left.

And I do think that the rivers of flow of human capital benefit Europe right now. I think there's a lot of people are thinking, you know, maybe I'll put off going to the Bay Area, maybe I'll put off going to the Gulf moving. The youngest talented, most aggressive and ambitious people used to get

lot of human capital and financial capital is going to come back to Europe because of lifestyle and too, because Europe has been left for dead, the valuations are really low. So they're low, so you can take advantage of this. But they've got to have a government that gets out of the way in some fashion, although not to the extent that ours does presumably. There's got to be a sweet spot. We've gone too far to free markets. The EU is way too over it. I mean, the European Union,

it's not a union, it's a disunion, where nobody has control, but everyone has veto authority. Right. And it creates just, it supposedly takes about, there's a measure how long it takes to start a company, to get all the filings, the permits, higher people. It takes six weeks in the US,

“supposedly takes 16 months in France. I mean, that's just a problem, right? So I think there's a sweet spot.”

Well, though, I do think, in the US, there is pushback coming, whether it's, you know, Elon Musk threatening Rokana over normal statements about USAID, to what would happen in New York with Munbaan. I mean, there's a real push against a lot of this billionaire power unfettered capitalism that's coming, I think, hard and fast. And they're starting to win elections. They're starting to have, have a say. And, you know, you wouldn't normally see it as a politician like Rokana, push back

against Elon Musk at this point given, well, he's maybe he's not a trillioner right now. He came

down to $996 billion, which I feel bad for the guy. But one of the things that I do see coming

is a massive amount of payback to these guys. I just see it. I see it everywhere you go. And I think they're not going to be able to attack Trump in the same way they might like to, but this is going to be their vehicle of attack as these guys, as, and these companies are going to be in a world of hurt. And you'll see, you're seeing pushback from Disney to the Trump administration. You're seeing pushback from politicians like Rokana, you're seeing, you're seeing pushback all over the

place by average citizens across, and you're seeing winning by democratic socialist around this

“billionaire issue that I think is really growing in a way that is significant. And when they”

Democrats come back, if they sort of shove the old democratic establishment to the side, there's, you know, a lot of the Republicans, or a lot of the tech people don't think there's going to be payback, but I do feel like they're probably is. You know, I hope so. I think since the 80s, America has been obsessed with how to create wealth, I think the next 10 years, the dominant conversation is going to be what you do with wealth and what are the expectations of wealth

and tax policy? I mean, we talk about rich versus poor. I don't think that's right. I've talked a lot about young versus old, I'm not sure that's right. I think the conversation is going to be around entrance versus incumbents. If you're on your own assets, if you already have a company that's weaponized regulation, if you already own a home, if you already have a college degree, there's been this unhealthy zeitgeist among the incumbents to create scarcity such that

entrance can't get out of the crib and get customers because the incumbents have weaponized

government to basically make it impossible for entrance. And the entrance, who typically are younger,

middle class, are just fed up. Although it was interesting, there's an interesting story in the New York Times this week. It was a column that I thought was great talking about. Let me be more educated than you are, socrates, and what was happening in that. You're playing tonight at Spotify, you love me. I do, you love the call. Sadly, sadly, sadly, it's the worst relationship of my life, and my finest, uh, uh, come on. No, it's true, it's true. I do. I have weird affection. Someone literally

came up to me. I'm so you're bottom. This is what's happened to me here. You're in the last,

“I go away. I was supposed to laugh. You need to stop objectifying me, Scott. Um, someone came up to me”

last night and literally just went like this. Scott. How do you do it? I was like, I like him. Like, uh, I don't know why. This woman said so to why. Yeah. It was weird, but it was it. I'm

my reticose. You can be honest. No. Yeah. She's been asking about me, right? Never in your life,

will that ever. She's playing that game, right? You know what? I'm going to do something about it. I don't know. She's probably called security on you at this point. Anyway, in any case, but with the point I was making was that they had these issues back in ancient times where the were the oligarchs and the regular people, the quality got out of control in a way that was really significant. And that's exactly when you had pushed backs and pushed backs and pushed from

both sides. And I think we are absolutely at that time. And I don't think it's particularly helpful to say, you know, eat the rich, but there is a real movement in our country that is significant. You, again, New York elections are New York elections, but it says something when there's push backs.

armor plate their Tesla, is at some point if it starts to get ugly. And there is going to be an

“ugly moment, unfortunately, for them. And I think it's just, it's inevitable if they continue to”

sort of take everything and damage everything in the thing. Like that's a nice story. I hope it

comes true. I hope we make an manifestation of that at the ballot box. But the reality is I think Donald

Trump is going to sleep well and die of Mara Logo. And I think Bezos and all these guys are going to have really nice lives. And I think we've just got to decide what we want moving forward. But the notion that they're going to pay a price for this, money buys you a lot of protection. Well, it does. We'll have to see what happens. But I'm, I'm really interested in US elections coming up. All right, let's take a quick break. We come back. We'll talk about

Hollywood's record breaking year. If I are you on the team, charge faster and joy more. Support for the show comes from Zbiotics. Let's face it. None of us bounce back like we used to, especially after a great night out. One solution, pre-alcohol by Zbiotics. Zbiotics pre-alcohol probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD

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and feel your best tomorrow. I speak about alcohol a lot. I enjoy alcohol as I get older. I'm trying to moderate it. So it's be honest. My liver can't process it the way it used to when I was a younger man. But when I do go out and know I'm going to be drinking, I start the night with Zbiotics. I was doing this before they were an advertiser on the podcast. Go to zbiotics.com/pivot to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use pivot to check out. Zbiotics is back with a 100%

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Full-mondic aromas, thanks to innovative press-brew technology and super-sypt-sint-sorten café for every smuck. A leba premium café is already at $9.20. And that is now the Cuba capsule machine in Dina Chibu-Fiale and of Chibu-de. Scott, we're back, we're live at AdWakehouse at Con Lyons. We're officially, we're officially in the summer movie season in Hollywood is hitting new highs,

which is really interesting, Toy Story 5, just open to $312 million globally.

Total domestic box office year is estimated $4.46 billion. The highest since 2019 is recovered. And you predicted those? Yes, I did. Lots of movies brought in the big box project. Hail Mary, Michael, the Devil Wears Proto, which I'm starring in. Plus, low budget horror movies, back rooms and obsession and they're becoming blockbusters.

But it's the first movie since ET where the box office is moved up. And I noted, my son went to see both these movies and he's not gone to the movies.

“Since I took him to Toy Story 3, I think, at that point.”

Talk about this trend because these theaters, these movies, it's actual movie theater experience. It's a range of movies. It's not these big, big blockbusters. It's not an Avenger movie. It's, although there's one of those coming. It's a lot of, I would say, smaller movies in a lot of ways. And they seem to have been really spurring people. Not just to go to the movies. And of course, Toy Story 5 is 5. It's the fifth one. And it's apparently why I'm seeing it.

Really, it's the fifth. The fifth. Yes, Toy Story 5. Yes. Anyway, what do you, what do you make of this and how right was I about this situation? You called this. You went like this. That's ridiculous. Well, the question is, is it a trend or is it a dead count bounce? So, look, the movie industry, to be fair, some of the best performing stocks in media are actually theater

stocks, cinema, and IMAX are up. The hitters are 40 and 45 percent respectively. So, I'm not

That's, Netflix serves your content for 30 cents an hour. That's an incredible deal.

And then there's Emirates and Qatar Airlines in Singapore. That's IMAX. That's an incredible experience. The guys in the middle, like AMC, or Delta United, are getting crushed. So, people are willing to spend 20 or 30 or 40 bucks to get IMAX or have a really, like, I live eye pic, although that just went bankrupt. But they want an experience or they just want 30 cents an hour and reasonably good content. But the other, I mean, the other biggest trend

culturally right now is IRL, coming out of COVID, people probably lost somebody. People do have disposable income. The economy has been fairly strong. And people want to get out and touch

“her ass. And I think they're just having a really healthy gag reflex over isolation.”

Yeah, I do think there's a gag groups over social media and everything else.

Yeah. It's really, it's interesting. Gary Vaynerchek here now says analogue is in versus, which I was like, no, shit Sherlock. It's really, but the idea of the idea that this pushing way, I have long thought that social media is going to decline rather precipitously. Especially among young people. And become more of it. You know, because you're starting to see tech companies like Google just invested in A24, which I thought was in everyone lost their minds

in Hollywood. They thought they were going to pull their data. I think they're using it to try to figure out how to do better storyboarding, how to use AI, and how to figure out how to change the movie making process, which isn't such a bad idea to use those tools. Although Hollywood does have a gag reflex to all of these things in favor of these in real life cinema experiences.

“Yeah, I think both can be true because if you look at, I don't understand,”

people go on Instagram to find out about a yogurt store that'll spend 40 minutes in line for. So that's a combination of the two things. The downside of the IRL trend is the following. And that is, I mean, there's a couple of things. You're about to see tables and mechanists and a beef increase, 40, 50% of the price of summer. Because there's about to be 12,000 new millionaires in the Bay Area through Anthropics, SpaceX, and OpenAI. And if you're a 36-year-old who

got a CS degree from Carnegie Mellon, quite frankly, haven't had, you know, you weren't, didn't have the most social capital in high school quite frankly. And you wake up and you've been broke and you've been paying your student loans and you wake up after the IPO and you're worth

$11 million. You're not going to Disneyland. You're going to a beef that you're seeing black coffee.

The flush of douchebag money about to roll over, about to roll over Europe's the summer is going to be just frightening. And the other thing that's really kind of sad about this is the reason why these concerts and these music festivals can charge two, three, five grand for VIP tickets is because 20 and 30 somethings. When I was 20 something and 30 something, you know what I was doing with all my money? I was saving for a house. And I worry that 20 and 30 somethings have just stopped

saving for a house. They've just given up. They're like, okay, we are not going to save 200 grand for a house. The houses are two million, the store homes are two million dollars. Yeah, I'm going to put a cello. Yeah, the smaller houses are million. Yeah, your point being. Oh, well, these were just fascinating trends about in real life care. All right, okay. In any case, what does that mean? Because one of the--

You know, I exposed myself to them. You emotionally and you jab. Yeah, I do. You jab. I was still on douchebags with money in a visa because you're the only person I know that goes to a

“visa. But he's having a fantasy moment. I pay for everything. What do you say to like her?”

I love drugs. I like that. We're going to get questions from you all. Who's want to roll with me in a business, seriously? That's right, meet you there. Yeah. I absolutely would not. So, she literally text me like, where are you? Where are you? No, no, no. No, I said I'm downstairs talking to Parasold and I will not be coming up. My favorite actress. He just made a Parasold in joke that was gross. Just trying not to ignore it. So, um, seen that movie 10, 12 times. Okay. All right,

in any case, um, is there? I think a lot of the tech companies really are moving into media, not necessarily in the nefarious ways that they are also moving into media. But Instagram wants to spot in your streaming line up. The app is testing horizontal video, long-form content, episodic series, which I think is really interesting. I just met with some Instagram people recently. There are also reaching out to creators, which they were doing in my case to start making

micro dramas. But what is the stuff you want to make? Short serialized episodes of 1 to 3 minutes each, which was a trend many moons ago and didn't really work out. If you recall, a bunch of creators were trying to do that. And obviously, Quibi was the other one. Is this sort of back

call it, uh, huge trend. I don't know about you. I'm absolutely, I hate to admit, and I'm absolutely

“addicted to Instagram, reals. And I think it's become my primary source of information too.”

Yeah. I think the algorithm is incredible. So do you think they can take it to the next step

to create mini dramas? Because it didn't work the first several times. This is the third. I just don't think you ever, I hate to say that. I just don't think you ever bet against Mark Zuckerberg. I find I used to think TikTok was going to disrupt meta. Now I find myself spending less time. I don't know about you. This is me too. Marketing on TikTok and more time on reals. I think they look at it and said, I think Mark says, you know, it's as I'm saying, that's amazing.

Steel it. Steel it. And then make it better. And then point our billion and a half person fire hose out it. Yeah. So if your marketers here, where do you start to point stuff at entertainment? They're right. It continues to be there. That's going to be entertainment. It's a hard one because any business dependent upon alphabet unless you're the creator. If you try and get in the middle, your margin is their opportunity. 10 years ago, some of the

biggest firms here in houses or SEO companies. And then alphabet said the whole point of our technologies, we eventually make you obsolete. So I'm very reticent. You know, if you're a creator and you can displace Comcast or ABC or ANE with one of these platforms that will give you a

“greater share of revenue, I think YouTube does that pretty well. Yeah. But any business banking on”

you're interviewing Maryath Levint tonight, the CEO of New York Times. I don't know if you know the social support of the New York Times. But we honed something called About.com. And it was worth

a billion dollars. And then one night our revenues were down 60% because Google did some panda

thing and basically just crushed our traffic. So a decent test, anyone should ask themselves, what percentage of our revenue and margin is dependent upon one of these platforms? Because they'll keep you in business just long enough until you get real margin and then they'll come for you. So anyways, I'm I'm joining on here. I think it's situational, but I think these guys are basically in the business of just finding except for the creators. They, you know, they do some there,

but I wouldn't want to be in a business focused ever on these platforms. On these platforms, but that's exactly where it's going. This is the first time I've thought about creating stuff, not, you know, I just did this television show, but now I'm thinking, how would I do it not with any of the regular TV entities? Like what would be the way to make, say, if we decide to make a pivot television show, for example, what is a television show going forward? And that's something

I'm thinking about a lot. Well, it would be on, yeah, you're right. It would be on YouTube with clips

“and but if you look at, why is pie casting drawing so much talent right now and growing so far?”

It's not your looks, but go ahead. When we first started, I was easy one. So I'm very, that was a layout. So when we started this podcast almost eight, nine years ago and I'm very transparent about economics. I think rich people not talking about their money is nothing, but an effort to suppress the middle and the lower class, rich people talk about their money all the fucking time. Start talking about money. Anyway, when I first started pivot, I got 15% of the revenue, because the

means of production, a company with capital and a studio, I used to go into that lame studio on broad street and they knew how to do podcast and it was technology and union people. And so the means of production, whether it's MSNBC or CNN or podcast back then, meant that the talent got 15% you probably got more you were the star. But now talent on podcast gets 70% because the means of production just doesn't have the power. Yeah. That's effectively the arbitrage that's taking place

across all media is the means of production is being arbitraged and getting out of the getting people out of the middle such that creators with great content in the end consumer can enjoy. Podcasts are 80% of a television show for 5% of the production cost. So there's opportunity

for advertisers and creators. And the example I always use is Colbert 60 million a revenue 100 million

costs, a band, a theater, unions everywhere make up artists, 5 people on the guest booking team. It made 60 million was not economic. He's going to go to a podcast. He'll take six people and make it out of the podcast arc. He'll do 20 million this first year and it'll cost 4 million a produce. So that's a pretty good deal for Steven. Yeah, if that, absolutely. All right, we're going to go on a quick break. We have one more thing to talk about when we're back.

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“We've had so many cool guests, Caleb Huron, busy Phillips, Stavros Halkius, Levern Cox,”

Hassan Piker, Alana Glazer, I promise you're going to have a good time. Now on the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is the downside. I'm Seth Matlin's, my new show creator, destroy, reimagining marketing, explorers, how every decision a company makes. Not just the marketing ones, but the HR, I/R pricing, or design and planning ones, the ones most don't consider marketing at all, contribute to either

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Podcast Network and the wisdom is coming. New episodes drop weekly on YouTube and your favorite podcast app. Okay Scott, we're back with more news. The World Cup right now, as you said, there's going to be a lot of gambling and the underlying markets are a worry, but what do you imagine the effect of World Cup will be going forward? What is your thoughts on where, what, what, what are the takeaways

“from doing that because it really is? I think the most important, as you said, economic story right now,”

across the globe. Yeah, I don't have any real insight other than what I said. I think the world and the West needed a reason to like each other again and recognize that Americans distinct of our leadership are an interesting loving kind people with really fattening but wonderful food. And the Europeans and the all these nations have incredible cultures and they bring a little taste of that culture.

Yeah, you're going to see the prices of teams go up and even I go back to the wealth creation of these companies that just want public, that probably took the price of these companies going up

because sex drives everything. And if you're a 45 year old who quite frankly never got

laid in high school, you're trying to figure out a way to become the sexist man and Cleveland and the way you do that is by buying the Cleveland Browns. And so all of a sudden there are a ton of people who want to own sports teams right now that have capital. So you just saw the price of every shitty football, cricket team, whatever, go up 2030 percent. Space X up 20 percent, the price of most sports teams globally went up 30 or 40 because you're going to have midlife

crisis money which is a rational chasing trophy assets. Very excellent. All right, last thing, prediction and then we'll get questions from the audience. The my predictions of following the biggest IPO of this, the biggest tech IPO of this month in terms of first-day pop is not SpaceX. It's actually a European tech media company that's pricing next week. Does any, this is a test, any guesses? Benning spins. Benning spins is essentially the birxer half away

of beloved but forgotten internet brands, ever note, event bright, AOL, Vimeo, we transfer, meet up. All of these companies that we're supposed to be the next Airbnb or they were all the unicorns of the year. All the unicorns super fat. And then this company out of Italy comes and buys them, consolidates the back end, which is apply way of saying cuts cost dramatically. Increases the prices. A lot of these companies have very strong margin power

and consumer loyalty. Q1, 20, 25, 270 million, 120 million losses. This quarter, 625 million,

28 million in profits. They're getting a ton of momentum. It's essentially, it's orphans brought together. It's orphaned internet companies with a lot of margin power that have been forgotten and they're rolling it up. And this is a callback to the most profitable disruptive company that used to own can. This is a callback to WPP that used to buy companies for 7 times the

“bit the cut costs on the back end, reduce key man risk, so to speak, and then take it to the public”

markets at 12 times the bit the. I think this is an incredible company. It's at Italy, which is

quite made it across the bowl line. And the most fascinating thing about their numbers is 88% of their revenue is recurring revenue. All of these companies are subscription. So basically, this is SaaS meets Berkshire Hathaway. I like the fact that it's out of Italy. I like the fact that

it's not AI. So it's just a simple clean up. Two and a half billion revenues, it'll go out at seven

“eight times revenues. I think this company will have the largest pop of any internet tech IPO of”

the month. It's pricey. It's a classic is what's happening here? Well, it's essentially there's a value in these brands. They still have very loyal audiences. And they were also, they also grew up in a time where capital is cheap. So quite frankly, there's a lot of fat to cut. And these guys are executing my crazy. And once they have a public stock, think about how big the list is of companies to once hot and they're still good companies. Yeah. And they spent billions of dollars of

venture capital aggregating audiences. Yeah, like red envelope, for example. Oh, so I'm so hostile to that. Jesus Christ. No, that was a good company. I swear to God. Yeah, thanks to that. It was a good idea. You can have the kids every weekend. So. No, but there are a lot of values, a lot of these companies. Anyways, my prediction is the biggest IPO in terms of first-day pop is going to be a European the Berkshire Hathaway I've forgotten internet brands. And that's this company called bending

spinach that I had not heard of until two weeks ago. I'm kind of fascinated with it. Anyway, all right, questions from the audience. Let's wear the thing. Here we go. We're going to go around. Keep in tight so we can answer as many as possible. Hi, Kim McKenzie from Ladies and Strategies. So you guys often talk about Holly Market. Do you think that it's going to be used as a legitimate polling data and predictions for the new S election and should it?

legitimate house. So I mean, people are on it. So you can't really stop it. I think people pay it. It's one of these things during elections, US people go and stare at them for a minute and then they go away from them. I think it's being used more as opposed to going to all the, there was a bunch of others that people would go to all the different polling, a accumulation size. I think Scott's been very negative on polling. I think a lot of these prediction markets

are easily gained. And so I worry about their their their reality, but they often do reflect

“sentiment, right? So I think it's just one of those other signals you have to get, but I definitely”

pay attention to them more than I should. And I know they're gained in some fashion. I think they're also easily manipulated by a wealthy person saying named Elon Musk who has enormous amounts of funds that he's going to put towards the midterms to create all manner of confusion. And so that's the real danger in it. I'm not sure voters pay attention to it. Like, I just don't. I don't know voters spend a lot of time. I think a lot of the pundit class certainly does. I use calcium the time

for and I find I think polling firms that are non-coolitative are basically out of business.

Calshy is never gone and interest rate cut wrong. They have predicted every single

that action hundred percent. I totally rely on the prediction market specifically calcium for because there's something about pundit saying what they think is going to happen and then looking at where people actually put money. That if you really want to know how someone feels, see where

“they're spending their money. So I think they're, I think they are, I'm fascinated by the data.”

I think they're incredibly accurate and on. But they have to self-govern themselves more, because they're, because the government's coming after you seeing all these different arrests. And so if they don't self-govern, sort of the gaming that goes on, I think it's going to be a, they're going to sort of shoot themselves in the foot on that regard. Because there's case after case of someone doing something fun. Yeah. I hope you're right. That's the right thing. The internet is

littered with companies that we're supposedly going to be regulated. Yeah. That we're doing, I mean we'll see. I hope there's something to go after these companies. You've noticed a lot more action very quickly as opposed to bigger social media companies right away. But the amount of big back in the amount of, we're going to find out in two weeks, the amount of money being wagered on these markets around the world cup. Yeah, huge staggering. It's going to be bigger.

It's going to be bigger than what was gained in Vegas during the same period. Yeah. I think more

than $5 billion has already been traded on the world cup outcomes across those two platforms,

wishing you enormous. Next question. Hello. Hi. Hi. Great episode. Ted from the agency, advertising agency, parking battery. Quick question. I love your unvarnished opinion on this. Do you see a big next act from some of the CEOs that were pushed out? I'm thinking Adam from we were Travis from Uber. And they've gone on to do their own thing. But given all the dynamics and excitement, you know, that we've been seeing and talking about today, do you see a big

that rental weird fucking thing. I don't know what that is. He's done okay. He's done okay. Yeah, I mean, they're fine. And Travis has done his ghost kitchen thing. And now he's doing robotics.

“Robotics, something around robots. They're going to try. I think most of these people don't”

have a second act. They just sort of wander around and pontificate. That's been my experience.

They had one great moment, often fueled by anger. And then they don't really. There's very few that have double acts that I've seen. I can't, can you think of one? Someone who, like, got sort of turned around and then came back. I think they get rich, happy. They've surrounded themselves by enablers who violently agree with them at all times and saying, you got, you know, you got screwed. You know, or carrots wish it was mean to you. Like, or something,

you were right the whole time. And I think they just don't, most of them don't learn from their mistakes. And they don't. And that's the way you develop the next thing to me. But that's, the good money is on no, because a couple of things happen. One out of seven companies works is so much has to go right for the company, just probability that if you nail that in so many moons lined up for your success, you're kind of due for them not to line up. It is really hard to

repeat, really hard because so many things have to line up. And the other thing is, the majority of great artists stop, can't, you know, they slip in the shower when they're 24 and they have a hit song and then they hit 30 and they're just all stops. Because you have kids because your brain changes, because you start evaluating risk, all of a sudden you stop thinking crazy and you have the guidelines of societal norms. You're not working 18 hours a

day because you're rich and you don't need this shit and you want to spend time with your kids. So the mojo and the creative genius that's fucked, I mean, who told Michael Jackson, "Grab is crotch with a glitter glove." I'm telling you 40 old fathers don't think that way. It's so you lose that creative craziness, you lose some mojo and just statistically speaking to repeat. I've started nine businesses. I'm generously three, four and two and all of them seem my great

ideas at the time and more of it than anything was just luck and timing and it's very hard to hit the

“lottery twice. So the good money is usually on no. Yeah, I think most of you listen to Cedar,”

like Zuckerberg continues to excel. Like, or cook whatever you think of the golden statue, continue to excel. The people that stay at the companies tend to like, such in Adela, like you've seen like that kind of thing. I don't see a lot of new re-birth. There's not many rolling stones out there. I would say right here. Get either names David. Good day. I've got a question for you. U.S. Related. There's a lot of news about redistricting voting rights between machines,

yaddi, yaddi, yaddi. Yeah, we've noticed that. Oh, you have noticed that. Yeah. So what's your prediction of how that will impact the elections? I'm asking on behalf of the world. Well, I think a lot, you know, it's, I would agree. I have, I read a lot about, I'm not an expert in this area, but from what I understand, the Republicans have vastly overreached in this area, and it's not working, and they may live to regret their efforts. I don't think people like it. I don't think voters like it.

That said, it's, they've done a lot of, like, we've created all these partisan, like the note, if there's a chart of partisan, you know, purple areas and blue and red, and it's like, there used to be a lot of purple. Now, there's not a lot of purple. They've managed to do it. And then, of course, the Democrats reacted correctly to try to mute it in California and everything

“else, but that's not the way you want to go, right? You want these districts. And so, I think,”

I believe in Scott, I don't know how Scott feels about it. I believe in voters. I think they ultimately

pushed back, and I think the Republicans have started to see some real losses in some of these redistricted areas, and you was seeing a lot more. There was a story in the Washington Post this week about the enthusiasm of Democratic voters. Even if they're not enthusiastic about Democrats, they're they're turning out more. And Republicans are kind of, they are disgusted with from, you know, they really are. He's losing base after base after base, and so it's finally kidrock and that

lean greenwood guy, like essentially. He can't get entertainers to go. He's losing Latinos. He's losing all vests, young men for sure. He's losing all the stupid comics. So, I don't know if it's going to work, but it's not a good thing. The three things I think of her are country more than anything

one is gerrymandering to his Fox News and the third is social media if I had to pick the three things.

for Democrats. And for pushback on Trump, you know, he's, I think the least second least popular president at this point. No, he was the least, he was the least the least. Yeah. The, so things look good. Gerrymandering and just taking a grid and placing it over America or D. Gerrymandering is a great

“talking point. One happened for the selection. The X factors are following. This is what I think”

happened in the last couple months. I think Elon Musk, called President Trump, and said, if you lean on the SEC chair and then ask that to include me in the NASDAQ 100 indices, which will create an incremental 10 to 30 billion dollars in demand for my flow, we'll take my net worth of 20 to 40 billion all spend one to 10 billion dollars on the midterms. And there's nothing to stop them. So I think the

X factor is Musk is Musk because the reality is much like voters in Americans are smart and

doubted that the elections are kind of one and lost in a 10% in the middle. And those people are busy and have things to do and they're influenced by media and the good work you do. And if you're increasing that worth by a hundred or two hundred billion dollars because of SEC and NASDAQ anomalies that have never been granted to any other company and you have a direct line to the President who can make this shit happen, why wouldn't you say hey boss, I'll spend 10 billion dollars.

10 billion dollars is going to win a lot of us. He spent, he influenced the last presidential election with 250 million. And this is the power. This is the problem. This is why throughout history, a known known as the following, power corrupts and absolute power absolutely corrupts. And in a democratic society with network effects, money and technology create power on a level and a

retreat never seen before. So a combination of citizens united, a very smart guy understands

technology and a willingness to spend one five or ten billion dollars in the election.

“Look out below. The only thing is the quality of their candidates is really quite bad and that's”

that's really and some of the democratic candidates are very compelling. I think has a better bench and there is an element to that. They've managed to pick really unattractive horrible people. And in the must case, I do agree with him. He's got enormous amounts of power. The thing is a lot of reporters and others are on to him and the more you expose him, the more people are repelled by him. And so there is an element to take advantage of there. The more he looks like he's manipulating the

elections, the more people push back against it. He and Trump, the the brand has gone down. I think the key more than Trump than anything. Okay, last quick question. We're right here. I tend to get my news from blue sky but following dispersed creators in media like

Heather Cox Richardson. Who just had on? Yes, she's amazing. And substax and things like that.

Is there enough reach there to actually make a dent and get in front of people or is that just kind of like a losing model, subscription based, and it'll probably go nowhere given a lot of collections of

“little voices? The answer is yes. I think what is it blue now? Blue sky, I'm sorry. I think it's”

acute and adorable and it's going to die slow death. I just don't think it's got, I think it got some early traction. This is just vibes. I don't look at the day. I haven't seen the data. But a substax, I think, is a winner. And I do think that these platforms, there's just too much creator content. The most encouraging thing about creator content right now. It's 50% of the ad spend on creators is in nano or micro creators. And that is people doing little niche things.

And so trust from institutions is leaking to trust to people who go after varying the specific crowds out the narrow. I've been watching this dad who while he cooks talks about universal health care and I just find fascinating. So I think some of them will win. The one you brought up blue sky, I'm not, I'm not, I think it's a better brand than a business right now. But yeah, I think there's going to be a ton of cool little niche platforms that will likely be swallowed up by the big players.

Make the final comment on that. I think the increasing power of all these smaller things are going to really be coming very strong at this point in terms of not just, but numbers too and people listening and everything else. And I do, but I do think we can't abandon certain central institutions like the New York Times or CNN or all these things. They have to be owned and run by people with responsibility towards actual journalism. Because you can go on and on

about the Lincoln Memorial all you want. I mean, what was happening in flight and pool was just a fat flat out lie by President Trump. But it took the New York Times to actually go and find all the data and do the reporting. And so you, that all that depends on a thriving journalistic

that aren't incompetent. And you know what I'm talking about in this case. But that we, we,

we support those at the same time, push all these creators. I have helped a lot of people leave big journalistic institutions. But they're doing great work. And the thing is that it's very hard to do investigative work. It's very hard to do the really hard reporting without the support

of institutions. And there are economic models if we do it right that will continue to protect

that. And so I'm hoping there'll be a combination of big institutions that figure out the economic's better, which they can with owners that aren't incredibly idiotic. And then, and then these smaller ones that are sort of spurring them to do so. And a collection of them,

“I think, is incredibly powerful. I think Scott and I have a lot of influence that we never thought”

we'd have. But it's beyond influence. It has to be informed influence and reported analysis. And so it's not just people doing takes, hot takes all over the place, because that doesn't, that doesn't tell you things. You need real reporters on the ground understanding what's happening and bringing it back to people in a fair way. And so I think, I do, I'm very pro on media right now.

“I think it's one of the most undervalued stocks. I think it's undervalued in a lot of ways.”

So I'm hoping that at some, I know there's this worries about these billionaires taking over and quashing them, let them as Melbourne's likes to say, because we have lots of options. And we have lots of choices. And I do think everybody is very open to new ways of getting information. And so they can try their best, but they're not going to be able to quash really great reporting over a long

“period of time. I don't think that. And I believe in that. Okay. All right. Thank you guys so much.”

Okay, Scott. That's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more pivot. Read us out. Today's show was produced by Lera Name and Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin and Todd Weisman, earning your top engineer at this episode. Thanks, Salt So To Drew Bros. Mr. Vera, Laura Stark,

Will Lee and Jenna McGill. We start currots. Fox, we just have a second bit of survival.

And make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening. To pivot from VoxMedia, you can subscribe to the magazine and join Mac.com/pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Go team, Scott, Lynne. It could happen. Yes. It could happen. Thank you. Thank you.