ESPN Gambles On A Sportsbook & You Need to Earn How Much to Buy a House?

0:00Tonight on NBC, Jimmy Fallon and Bozma St John host the highly anticipated new competition show. I hired 10 creatives from all walks of life. They will be battling it out to see who can impress the world's biggest brands. This is a huge opportunity. This is the battle for the next big idea. This is not play play. We're spending millions of dollars. I'm so excited to embark on this adventure with all of you. Make the best I do win! On Brand with Jimmy Fallon. Series premiere tonight on NBC. Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. On today's pod, the same company that brought you Mickey Mouse and Lightning McQueen is now offering sports betting.

0:41Then you literally won't believe what a pet psychic charges to communicate with your furry little friends. It's Tuesday, November 14th. Let's ride.

0:54Toby, I came across this crazy stat. So a new NCIS spinoff is being released today, NCIS Sydney. And low-key, this franchise is ridiculously popular. More than 300 million people around the world watched some version of NCIS last year, and almost 1 ,000 episodes have been produced across the OG NCIS, NCIS Los Angeles, NCIS New Orleans, and NCIS Hawaii. This franchise has generated about$8 billion since it was first launched in 2003. What the heck? I would love to be the NCIS of podcasts. Just an under-the-radar juggernaut that doesn't need the recognition, doesn't need the awards, but just absolutely pulls in viewers.

1:34A thousand episodes, too. Neil, can you imagine we get there? We'll get there, man. 200 is coming up later this month. I know. I'm excited for that. Before we get into the news, we have a quick word from our sponsor, Brex. Neil, you spilled the beans about my pickleball shoe company yesterday, and I had multiple people reach out to me on LinkedIn, which is great for me and for Brex because now I definitely need help managing my spend. Oh, so you're thinking about hiring some employees in your future? Well, Brex has great expense management software and corporate cards so you can hook up your new workers in no time.

2:07So do you wanna come work for me? Toby, I'm the one who hired you at the Brew. I don't think I can come work for you now, but shout out to Brex for helping you do your thing. Visit brex.com or Toby's LinkedIn DMs for more info.

2:23When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone, all protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com. Okay, the way that you watch sports may never be the same because today ESPN is launching its own betting app in a$1.5 billion partnership with Penn Entertainment. Sports gambling has been legal in the U.S.

3:00for years now, but ESPN getting into the game feels like a game changer. That's because ESPN, for all its recent struggles, remains the world leader in sports and broadcasts games from college football to NBA basketball to Monday night football. Now that ESPN has its own betting app, you can be sure that betting will be front and center on its telecasts from now on. But the question on everyone's mind is whether ESPN Bet, as this app is called, can grab a piece of the sports betting pie in the United States. Right now, the industry is dominated by two giants, FanDuel and DraftKings, which collectively own more than 70 % of the market.

3:36ESPN and Penn think by leveraging ESPN's massive distribution through TV, websites, fantasy apps, and on-air talent, they can become a major player in what is an absolutely booming industry. Toby, this thing is coming online in 17 states today. Will people bet through ESPN? I am a little skeptical, Neil, because ESPN Bet is acquiring kind of Barstool's 3 % share that they had in the market before that partnership fell through. And then Fox Bet is the reason why I'm skeptical on this, because they tried to launch a betting service under their kind of TV network. And that kind of failed. They recently shut that down.

4:14And to be fair, ESPN is a much, much stronger brand than Fox Sports is. But it still shows kind of the perils of trying to cross over from pure entertainment, pure sports media company into the sports betting world. Yeah, I want to talk about how far how far a U-turn this has been for Disney. Disney, of course, owns ESPN. And as recently as 2019, CEO Bob Iger said that the company would never get into betting. And I kind of teased it at the top because Disney is supposed to be family entertainment. They make Mickey Mouse. They make animated movies. Disney Plus, their streaming network is meant to be a family safe platform.

4:51But now they're getting into sports gambling, which is not legal in most places, in certain places in the U.S. And it's certainly not legal for kids. And so this is just kind of been a massive pivot for ESPN and Disney. And I think it's because ESPN may not think it can survive or grow in a sports landscape that is now dominated by gambling money. Yeah. The synergies, though, Neil. You have to talk about the synergies. They're so delectable that I even had to use the word synergies. The fantasy angle to me is really big because ESPN's fantasy sports players are growing 10 % year over year. It's just this massive, massive industry.

5:29And so there's definitely this world where you open your fantasy football app, you see bets tailored to the players you own on your team. So again, I can see why this feels like a match made in heaven. Also, ESPN really wants to leverage the personalities they have, like the Pat McAfee's of the world. where you tune into a broadcast and the broadcaster say, here's who I'm betting on today, and you can tail their bets or fade their bets. So again, it makes so much sense on paper. It really will come down to, does this destroy any of that brand equity that we've talked about? Because yeah, Disney's been so protective of their brand.

6:04And it's interesting that ESPN is getting into betting because ESPN, in addition to being a place where there's a lot of talking heads about sports, is a news gathering organization. They have reporters and insiders. And there are a lot of ethical questions that are being asked about ESPN with its news gathering organization, how that interfaces and whether there will be conflicts of interest with gambling. And it's trying to get out ahead of that and put out restrictions for the Adam Schefters of the world and the Wojahs of the world. For people who don't know, these are two people that cover the NBA and the NFL very intensely and they often break news.

6:40That can change betting lines. And so ESPN wants to put up some guardrails. But as we've seen in the past, there have been instances where journalists that have been employed by gambling companies have moved betting lines and drawn a lot of scrutiny. Even if there wasn't any foul play involved, there's going to be a boundary that might be crossed at certain points. And ESPN needs to get ahead of that to maintain integrity. They need to take a page from our books and say not financial advisors, not sports betting advisors. I don't know if that's going to be enough. There's a lot of money in this industry.

7:10All right. Let's move on. If you're looking for a house right now and struggling to find one, blame Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, the nice boomer couple from down the street. Older buyers are dominating the U.S. housing market right now. This year, the median age for a repeat home buyer was 58 years old, according to a new report from the National Association of Realtors, up from 36 years old in 1981 when the survey first started. Even though I said blame Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, it might just be Ms. Johnson you have a bone to pick. the share of recent homebuyers who are married couples dropped to under 60 this year the lowest level since 2010 and it's single women that are increasingly picking up the slack if you were a single woman roughly 40 years ago you'd be buying a house at the same rate as your single male counterparts but now the rate for women is almost double that of men and regardless of gender you're definitely rich the average homebuyer's income jumped to 107 000 in 2023 up from 88 000 just a year earlier.

8:11Neil, I feel like none of this is especially surprising given the current vibes around the housing market. No, I want to talk about the effects of high mortgage rates and how that influenced payments because down payment surged because as mortgage rates grew to 6 % last year. For first-time buyers, down payments reached 8 % of the total price, which is the highest rate since 1997. And 20 % of buyers paid cash in 2023, all cash. And that's up from 13 % percent in 2021. So you see the increase in down payments shows how people do not want as little of a mortgage to pay off as possible with rates surging as they were.

8:49Yeah, it is so funny to me that now that people, when people weren't spending all this money on Taylor Swift concerts, they weren't paying in cash. And now that people are, they're starting to kind of bump that up a little bit. And then we've also talked a little bit about what are the big disruptions that the housing market has come to reckon with in the post kind of COVID years is that a lot of people aren't moving as far from the previous homes as they did back in 2022. Remote work seemed like it was going to be a really big part of a lot of people's lives. So people were moving to far and wide different parts of the country.

9:21But now the distance move from the last home decreased from 50 miles to 20 miles, which has got a lot closer to the previous historic norm of 15 miles. So that was interesting to me. I know people's really started moving far away. They're like, Wait a second. I want to be kind of closer to where I initially have been. Yeah. No, just to go back, just to tie this all together and go back to your original point about boomers buying up houses. You know, they're really competing with the first time buyer because they're all both going over the same type of house. The starter house for the first time buyer is often the same type of house that baby boomers want to downsize to after all the kids have moved out of the house.

9:57So there really is, you know, a lot of competition over the same type of smaller house. Maybe it's a one-story house. And if you're a seller and there's been a lot of competition for your house these days, you're probably going to go with the older buyer who has a lot more money, a lot more equity, can probably put a higher down payment down than the first-time buyer. And that's really squeezing these initial homebuyers out of the market. Yeah. And I mean, speaking of just a typo on it, first-time buyers are also getting older themselves. They clock in at 35 years old for a first house compared with 29 years old in the early 1980s.

10:29So everyone's getting older. Everyone's looking for the same houses and no one can see. Will I own a house by 35? Are you shaking the magic eight ball right now? That's three years from now. I think you got it, Neil. Depends where. I do not see it in my future. I like renting. Okay, the number of international students in the U.S. boomed last year, and it might be the financial pick-me-up colleges need following a major COVID slump. Overall, the number of international students grew by 12 % last year, the largest single-year increase in more than four decades, according to a new report from the State Department and the Institute of International Education.

11:04Driving the surge was one country in particular, India. The number of Indian students soared 35%, becoming the second-highest foreign population on U.S. campuses after China. Most of them are coming for grad school in programs like science, technology, and business. So why does this matter? Well, colleges love giving you free T-shirts, but they like international students even more. That's because these students pay mostly full tuition and the federal government estimates they pump 38 billion dollars a year into the U.S. economy. But perhaps even more impactful over the long term for me is building the talent pipeline.

11:39When international students come to the U.S., they sometimes decide to stay here and create companies, play a huge role in our economy and society. Toby, it kind of flies under the radar, but one of the U.S.'s most legendary exports up there with Hollywood and Coca-Cola is our educational system. And it seems like that diploma made in the USA brand is still going really strong. Yeah, still super strong. But I also just want to give a shout out to India. Everything is coming up for India this kind of decade. Remember, India is riding this massive population boom. It's due to surpass China's most populous country on the planet this year, according to a UN report.

12:12And its economy is also growing right alongside with it. It eclipsed the United Kingdom as the world's fifth largest economy. And it's got Germany at number four in its sights. and the IMF expects India's GDP to grow by almost 6 % this year, which is the highest of the 30 largest economies. So all of this boom, all of this economic boom is kind of spilling over into this influx of international students going to America. Yeah, but they're coming to the U.S. They're not staying in India for grad school or school. So I think that shows to the U.S.'s staying power as a hub for education. Well, no, and it actually ties back to India's struggles to educate its workforce.

12:49According to NPR, the unemployment rate in India for college grads is 20 percent. So there's also just a lot of people. There's not maybe enough jobs over there to support like this influx. But also, yeah, it goes to show that maybe India's higher education system isn't preparing the workforce in the same way that maybe America's college workforce or education system is doing. And this is big for U.S. colleges because the number of kids from the U.S. going to colleges has remained low from COVID. Well, you know, a lot of people went remote during COVID for classes and they just haven't come back in a big way.

13:25We're still down three point six percent for freshman enrollment in 2023. So looking abroad and, you know, those numbers also fell off a cliff, especially during COVID, because there were all these travel restrictions and no one came to the U.S. or no one really traveled anywhere for school or anything otherwise. So it's really important for the U.S. to get these numbers back up. So it's very much a relief to do that. And I was just thinking about when we were talking about India and the education system and people coming here, I just thought about all of the Fortune 500 companies that are run by Indian or Indian Americans now.

13:56And I was like, OK, what are their biographies? Like, how did they get here? Turns out a lot of them came here for grad school. Sundar Pichai of Alphabet is one I was thinking of. He came here for grad school. Satya Dadella of Microsoft came here. He went to University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee for grad school. And then Arvind Krishna, who's the CEO of IBM, also went to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for a PhD in electrical engineering. So this is a huge way to build our talent pipeline. I guess shout out to the Midwest higher education system because they seem to be doing well. All right.

14:31Now, before we jump into the next half of our show, we're going to take a quick break. This episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels and music are made for each other. They share a rhythm in the craft of making something timeless while being a part of legendary nights. From backyard jams to sold-out arenas, there's a song in every toast. Please drink responsibly. Responsibility.org. Jack Daniels and Old No. 7 are registered trademarks. Tennessee Whiskey, 40 % alcohol by volume. Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee. Hey, business owners. we know you know the importance of maximizing every dollar.

15:06With the Delta SkyMiles Reserve Business American Express card, you can make your expenses work just as hard as you. From afternoon coffee runs to stocking office supplies and even team dinners, you can earn miles on all your business expenses. Plus, you can earn 125 ,000 bonus miles for a limited time through October 29th. The Delta SkyMiles Reserve Business card. If you travel, you know. Minimum spending requirements and terms apply. Offer ends October 29th, 2025. Exxon wants to power your vehicle, whether it's through gasoline or an electric battery. Yesterday, the fossil fuel giant said it was going to drill for lithium in southwest Arkansas in the hopes of becoming a major supplier for electric vehicle batteries by 2030.

15:49You might be thinking, Exxon, don't they drill for oil and gas? Yes, but they also are aware that the world will eventually ditch gasoline-powered cars for EVs, and they want to make sure they're involved in some way. And the way to weasel in is through lithium. Lithium is a key component, of course, to lithium ion batteries that are used in EVs. The problem is the U.S. is a tiny player in the global lithium market compared to South America, Australia, and primarily China. So as the race to scoop up lithium for EVs heats up, Exxon is making a bet that it's made in America. Lithium will eventually be the kind that goes into the Ford F-150 Lightning or electric Mustang.

16:26Toby, if Exxon is getting into lithium production, it can only lead to one question. Is lithium the new oil? What you call oil black gold is lithium silver gold, I guess. I don't know what lithium looks like. It's definitely sparkly. I mean, this is just smart business from Exxon. This, to me, is what the future of decarbonization looks like. It's not these big, splashy announcements that by 2050 will be carbon neutral. it's investing in infrastructure that actually leads towards a future where you know the combustion engine isn't the main form of power for cars anymore so when i hear that exxon plans to supply lithium for well over a million evs per year and become the leading supplier of the metal by 2030 i think they actually will because it's in their best business interest to ramp up their lithium mining capabilities right but uh all our listeners probably remember only a few weeks ago as exxon made a$60 billion purchase of Pioneer Natural Resources to grab a share of the oil fields in West Texas.

17:27And I think this deal is only worth$100 million. So the scale of how much it's drilling for fossil fuels and the scale of how much it is making a play in the lithium market are exponentially different. And the lithium play is much smaller. It's much smaller. It's a hedge of their bets. They're not betting the future of the company. But again, I still think it represents meaningful progress. I was also digging into how the heck you actually mine lithium because it's kind of fun. You actually use conventional oil and gas drilling methods. But instead of oil, you're trying to reach this saltwater, lithium-rich saltwater that's 10 ,000 feet underground.

18:03And then you use something called direct lithium extraction technology to separate the lithium from the saltwater. You used to have to do this thing where you would have these large evaporation pools where you would just wait for the saltwater to evaporate and then mine lithium from there. Now it's a lot more complicated and a lot more efficient in how you can extract the lithium. So I just thought it was funny that Exxon can use their existing oil and gas techniques to get to saltwater. It is a liquid that's underground. So I thought that was interesting. Yeah. And then just to wrap this up, there is going to be a global race for lithium.

18:35And right now, prices have fallen as more supplies come on the market. But as more EVs get produced in the coming decades, you need lithium. So there is an arms race right now to get your hands on lithium. Tesla, like it's done everything else, is bringing lithium production in-house. And it opened a huge facility in or it started to build a huge facility in Texas in May because it just knows that lithium will be so important. Elon Musk has called it one of the major choke points in building electric vehicles. So the race is on to secure lithium supplies. And maybe it'll happen in the U.S., but it seems like most of it is happening abroad right now.

19:14And that's not what U.S. companies like to see. Yeah, but the U.S. did just find what may be the largest lithium deposit on Earth back in September on the border of Oregon and Nevada. So it may hold 20 to 40 million metric tons of extractable lithium. So, again, if there's an arms race and we just found maybe the biggest supply. Bullish on Southwest Arkansas, by the way. Yeah, I know. Northwest Arkansas is booming. It's one of the boomingest regions, that's a word, in the country. And now Southwest Arkansas likely will have a lot of thousands of jobs created because of these. They're really abandoned oil drills wells that are being taken over by lithium production.

19:51So it seems like a somewhat productive use of what is now an industrial wasteland. Yeah, shout out Southwest Arkansas. Never thought I'd say those words. It's Tuesday, which means we are so back with another edition of everyone's favorite segment. toby's trends neil this one is for anyone out there who just wants to get away but doesn't want to mortgage the house that they may or may not be able to afford to do it it's called travel duping where dupe is a reference to a cheaper more generic alternative that still resembles the real thing in the context of travel that means opting for a more under the radar doppelganger of a more popular vacation spot expedia actually put together a list of recommended dupes so pay attention at home listeners this could save you a buck or two instead of going to nashville try out memphis and trade in country music for some soul instead of going trans transatlantic to find a striking body of water in a historic old town in geneva keep it in north america and try out quebec city for the same dose of both and finally if london is screaming your name try liverpool instead if it was if it was good enough for the beatles it's good enough for you neil when you're not sitting at this desk with me, you're a pretty astute traveler yourself.

21:06Are you on board with this dupe trend? I think it's great. I think people have been doing this for years, but it's been dubbed dupe now because of whatever TikTok. But no, I think going to a cheaper destination rather than these major cities that are super expensive and only becoming even more expensive is a great thing to do. Go off the beaten path a little bit. Often these more regional centers have more interesting culture and more of a local flair than the major metropoles that are going on around the world so i put together a few of my dudes yes i just you know i just had to so please tell me listeners if this is a good idea or not uh or if you like these or not philadelphia for new york nope okay just gonna give that one an x okay portland maine for boston this one is true i'm a portland guy through okay fort collins instead of denver okay i've never been to fort fort collins is sick but i do love them okay and then flagstaff arizona for literally any other mountain town out west yeah great for training too if you want to train for an ultra marathon go to fly right super super elevated and this one kind of random ocean springs mississippi instead of charleston south carolina i'm just gonna take your word for that one ocean springs is really cool it's kind of like an hour east of new orleans uh but it's a beautiful downtown super cool uh much cheaper than charleston i'm taking notes let's do a dupe tour neil we just go to all those places you mentioned.

22:25Okay, for our final story, how much would you pay to know what's going on inside your pet's head? If your answer was 550 bucks for 90 minutes, you're in luck because that's what a pet psychic goes for these days. People are increasingly booking session with these animal communicators to figure out certain behavioral issues or even learn about their pet's preferences for end-of-life care. The idea is these pet psychics can communicate with your animal on a level you can't. So you pay these folks to get inside their tiny, furry, adorable little heads. You know, the craziest part about this to me is that a lot of these times, these sessions are being conducted over the phone.

23:03Dawn Allen, a 48-year-old from Western Mass, does 30 phone sessions a week where she apparently connects telepathically with the animal and lets you know what makes them happy or if they are feeling anxious about anything. And she makes bank for it. She charges$85 for those sessions, which comes out to$2 ,550 a week. Neil, regardless of whether you believe in the skills of these animal communicators or not, it's a heck of a business. Of course it's a heck of a business to prey on people's anxieties around their pet. I mean, there's so many surveys that come out just how much people value their pet and it's part of their family.

23:39About half of U.S. pet owners think of their pets as much a part of their family as a human member. So you're just preying on these anxieties. So it makes me not happy. I know. And then the other part of another survey that speaks to this trend is that a 2022 YouGov survey found that 67 % of Americans said that they have had a paranormal experience. So you combine a massive influx of these pet lovers with a growing majority of people who do believe in kind of the psychic realms and the paranormal realms. And, of course, you have a recipe for these pet psychics popping off. This is wild. One of these, I should say, they like to be called animal communicators.

24:18And in this article in the Wall Street Journal that we're drawing from, they said that this is growing mainstream. You know, a few years ago, they were considered fringe lunatics. And now they're growing mainstream. I don't know whether that's true or not. Obviously, they're going to say that. But in one episode, one of these animal communicators found out that the dog didn't like their nickname of Big Al. It's actually so cute. The dog's name is Albie. And this video went super viral because apparently the animal communicator was told by the dog that I don't like my nickname. And she said that the dog didn't tell her what his nickname was.

24:55And then she later came to find out that the nickname was Big Al. And he didn't like it because he thought it made him seem large and overweight. Just adorable, though, to think about Big Al being stressed out about his nickname. The best part about this business, as Morning Brew writer Dave Lozo pointed out yesterday, is that the dogs can't tell you you're wrong. It's actually the perfect psychic kind of target because humans also fall for psychics all the time because if you get one thing right, you're like, oh, my God, they're totally right. The dog can't tell you anything. So I think it's actually a genius move.