WWE & UFC Billion $$ Merger, Journalist arrested in Russia, Weekend Winners

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0:45Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I am Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. And Neil, we have a winner of our morning brew mug giveaway. So just some quick backstory for anyone who wasn't aware there was a giveaway going on. We ran a contest over the past week where we offered to give away one of these beautiful Morning Brew daily mugs to anyone who shared the podcast in their family group chat, their work Slack channel, anywhere they have friends gathered online. So we have a winner. We want to give a quick shout out to Dahlia Hamilton and her dad, Jeff. So Dahlia is a loyal podcast listener, but her dad, Jeff, is maybe the biggest Morning Brew fan out there.

1:25She sent us screenshot after screenshot of her dad blowing up the family group chat, promoting the brew, saying, check out this fact, this funny tidbit, check out this news quiz. So truly one of the biggest morning brew families out there. So Jeff and Dahlia, we respect the hustle. We'll toss you an email later today, kind of getting your details so we can ship you this mug. But congrats, Jeff and Dahlia. Yes, and apparently Jeff turns. Actually, I don't know. We don't know how old he's turning, but his birthday is on Friday, April 7th. So happy birthday. Let's get into our show. It's going to be super packed.

1:58Elon Musk goes to war versus the New York Times and all of us are dumber for it. We have a new mystery Monday segment. So stay tuned what that is. And for the first time since 1860, people are talking about classical music. Oh, and we'll discuss why. But first, we've got a new sports entertainment juggernaut on our hands from the top rope. UFC parent company Endeavor Group has come in to buy WWE this morning to create a new $21 billion public company that will trade under the ticker TKO. And before we were talking and I was asking, why not KO? That's way cooler. And apparently Coke has KO. Lame.

2:36They ruined all the fun. They ruined all the fun. Yeah. So it's probably not a coincidence, or maybe it is, that this came a day after WrestleMania, which is WWE Super Bowl in Los Angeles. And so if all your friends were calling off plans this weekend, it's because they were watching WrestleMania. I wonder if that's where hair and makeup will be. Maybe. All right. So I want to just do a quick rundown of who the players are here. So UFC is the ultimate fighting championship. It's the largest mixed martial arts organization in the world. Think Joe Rogan making all those faces from the announcing booth when people get the crap beat out of each other.

3:10That's UFC. WWE is world wrestling entertainment. Think WrestleMania, scripted wrestling events with celebrities and people like John Cena, The Rock, Triple H. yeah no it's definitely a juggernaut it's crazy the valuations on this thing 21 billion for the whole company 9 billion for the the wwe and i do feel like this is one of those things that if you get it you're like oh yeah absolutely and if you don't you're like fake wrestling nine billion dollar company i don't get it but we saw those scenes from wrestlemania like it is packed it has this massive massive audience and i do just want to talk about the audience real quick because one of the things that contributes to this massive valuation is the WWE owns social media, like absolutely dominates legacy sports leagues.

3:55If we just look at YouTube channel subscribers, these stats are from a month ago, sort of a little outdated, but it's over 92 million YouTube subscribers compared to the NBA, which has 19. The NFL only has 10 million and the MLB has 4 million. So it just absolutely wipes the floor with these legacy sports companies. and then yeah that's that's one of the main selling points is that we reach the use we understand social media and like we get all those eyeballs right and i think they're going to be a live sports juggernaut on tv and that's what's also commanding these big valuations i mean nobody watches cable anymore except for the nfl and honestly just the nfl yeah so uh ufc and wwe can come in and say look we have property that we have events and property that you as entertainment uh you know companies broadcasters want and so they can command huge sports rights deals i mean the nba and these are blowing up anyway the nfl just agreed to 2.5 billion dollars for their sunday ticket package uh with youtube tv and that was a billion dollars more than the previous contract rights and i think both wwe and ufc their contracts are expiring soon so they're going to go back to the table and just be in an amazing leverage position an interesting fact about the television deals too is the wwe and the ufc have no off season so they actually command these higher valuations because there is no off season whereas the nfl it's only 18 games now per per season wwe is non-stop it goes all year long so it's not attracting as many eyeballs on like a per match or per game basis but since it has a whole year to play with it gets it gets there in the end can we talk about the people involved in this deal because the personalities are larger than life you have Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel so for people who don't know he's the Hollywood power broker who was an inspiration for Ari Gold in Entourage then you have Dana White who's this larger than life character president of UFC and then I haven't even mentioned Vince McMahon again, WWE's executive chairman, who bought it from his dad for$1 million in 1982 and then sold it yesterday, today for$9.3 billion.

6:10So he comes out of this looking pretty good. And two of them are from Massachusetts. Actually, no, Dana White's from Massachusetts and as is Joe Rogan from Massachusetts. So there's some mass blood going through there. A lot of mass blood. from Masso. That's why I bring it up. That is a crazy story. Again, we got to dive into the world of WWE yesterday and this morning, so that was pretty fun for us. I'm not watching it again, though. I watched WrestleMania for an hour, and I was just like, this is reality TV. I'm intrigued. I saw a guy get kicked in the face by a 300-pound linebacker, essentially, with no muscle, with no fat, and he just takes it in the face 15 times, and if any of those actually connected he would be in the hospital neil suspend delete just i just believe for a second i don't get it sorry okay anybody's young we're gonna uh switch gears here for uh a second and our second story today is about a wall street journal reporter evan gershkovich was arrested last week by russian authorities and charged with espionage so over the weekend tension has kind of continue to rise in this saga.

7:17In a pretty rare phone call, actually, between the U.S. and Russia, the U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, told his Russian counterpart that Gershkovich's detention was unacceptable and demanded Russia release him and another detained American, Paul Whelan. So, Neil, if this story sounds familiar, it's because it is. We kind of went through this whole thing with Brittany Griner and her detainment in Russia. We're entering this new era of hostage diplomacy, as the Wall Street Journal called it, which is actually what Gershkovich was in Russia reporting on. But before we get into this idea of hostage diplomacy, we should talk about who Evan is, like who he is as a person.

7:55Yeah. So most news stories I try to keep emotional distance from, but this one kind of hit home. I don't want to say it could have been me scenario because this guy is way braver, doing way cooler stuff. Like he uprooted his life here in the United States to go to Russia in 2017. And now he's literally reporting from a war zone. So, and I'm just here as a podcaster. So I want to make that clear, but he is boat. We're both 31 from the like Jewish families from the Northeast work in the same industry. So I felt like a little kinship with him. Um, but yeah, he grew up in New Jersey to, to Russian immigrants and developed a lifelong fascination with Russia and Russian culture.

8:31And then kind of just left, went to Bowdoin College and then picked up his bags and worked in various outlets starting in 2017 in Russia. And eventually, I think right before the war, he started working for the Wall Street Journal. Now he's in jail forever. Yeah, no, it's definitely a crazy. And again, we've mentioned hostage diplomacy, but it is this thing now where U.S. citizens are increasingly being like held captive or held in wrongfully detained in countries as a means of like getting like extorting the U.S. basically. And so 54 U.S. citizens deemed to be held hostage or wrongfully detained.

9:12They're currently 54 in 15 countries such as Cuba, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and of course Russia, because it is this bargaining chip that you can kind of hold over the U.S. in order to get something you want out of them. And what do they want? Russia is probably a prisoner swap. That's what they they traded Victor bout who was known as the merchant of death for Brittany Griner last December And so that is what people are expecting for Evan Here and something that was interesting was that Bill Richardson is the former New Mexico governor And now he's kind of an expert he's moved into expert and getting Americans home He said that what we have to do to try to get Evan home is not is not is do what we did with Brittany Griner which was, you know, raise awareness and go through media and mount this large media campaign.

9:59And that will sort of like bring that will accelerate negotiations. And what's interesting is that this phone call that you were talking about previously, that would have taken months to arrange. And then here it was four days after Evan was detained over there. So we'll see what happens. But I think raising awareness around it seems like a really important thing. and final note since we're both soccer fans evan is a big soccer player and my favorite fact is that he came in at bowden in an ncaa tournament game he did not play 110 minutes and then in the penalty kicks he came in and slotted the game winner so i don't know you're you're better at soccer than me you can tell you can tell me what it's like to not play the entire game and come in at the end so tough i hate when managers like sub in a player who hadn't played at all and but But hey, Evan stepped up.

10:50And his celly was pretty good. Yeah. Let's move on. This is a dumb story, but it is kind of important. It was another chaotic weekend. Another chaotic weekend over on the Bird app. Elon Musk began removing blue check marks from accounts that don't pay for Twitter blue. Except he didn't. Except he kind of did. The really quick background here is that to bring in more revenue, Musk has been asking people to pay for subscription blue. Twitter blue, which is a subscription, or else they'll lose their checkmark Saturday, April 1st. That sparked an outcry from celebrities who were like LeBron James, who was saying, I'm not paying you, and there were concerns that impersonators could swarm.

11:30The point of the checkmark in the first place was to verify the identities of famous people. Anyway, the deadline came and went, and for the most part, blue checkmarks were not removed because it was a manual process, the Washington reported, and it's like a spreadsheet. It's true. Did you read that? Yeah, I actually did see that. People are so confused. First of all, if you're going to set a date for anything, do not set it on April 1st because no one takes it seriously. And then, yeah, everyone's checkmark is still there. Except. You're right. Except. Except the New York Times. And this is the very petty thing.

12:04Musk does not like the Times for their critical coverage of him and tech. And after learning that the Times wouldn't pay for a Twitter subscription, Musk said that he would remove its badge. So the New York Times had its badge removed, and then Musk went on to hurl insights at them. Yeah. I mean, you buried the lead a little bit, too, in the sense that you said he found out that they won't pay for it. He found out by replying to a Twitter account called Doge Designer, who tweeted at midnight on Sunday a meme basically saying, like, oh, New York Times won't pay for it. And it was like Elon Musk saying, I don't care.

12:37And then Elon, of course, responds to that two minutes later and says, oh, interesting. Like, maybe we'll just take it away. And that's the one he took away. Obviously, it's a little bit of a joke. Like, I mean, not a joke in the sense that, but it's like petty that he's reacting to this meme and whatnot. But it is really dangerous to remove the checkmark from New York Times, especially in the age of misinformation when you're trying. He's specifically trying to fight bad actors. But it seems like every step he does enables them. Like, let's take the newspaper of, what's it called? What is the time?

13:12The gray lady. Nicknamed the gray lady and then maybe the newspaper of record. Yeah, of record. The newspaper of record. Let's take away their checkmark as a petty feud. He just messed this whole thing up because he's turned a checkmark into an anti-status symbol. The influencers, the people who are famous, don't want it. And a lot of people who have large followings don't want it because it makes it seem like they pay Elon Musk. and no one wants to be seen like that. It's become this very interesting, yes, status switch. Before we jump to break, one of the things that Twitter has said with the little guidance it's given is that Twitter's top 500 advertisers and its 10 ,000 most followed organizations who were previously verified wouldn't have to pay for verification.

14:02Except the New York Times. Except for the New York Times. So I checked and the Morning Brew is the 26 ,200th month followed account on Twitter. So we're close. Like we got to make up$16 ,000 and then Morning Brew could keep its check marks. Let's go. So if social media team. But we don't pay for it. That's important. We don't pay for it. But if we get into that top$10 ,000, then we won't have to. All right. That was a fun first part of the show. But before we jump into our next story, we're going to take a quick break. In America, half of every dollar spent on brand medicines goes to entities who don't make them.

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15:18I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-CONTACTS.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-CONTACTS. All right. We've got a new Monday segment that asks the question, who won the weekend? Toby and I will each nominate a contender. And I'll go first because I'm introing it. And you came up with the segment. And I came up with the segment. We'll see if it's good or not. Give us your feedback. All right. So, trained derailments aren't really a laughing matter. But one derailed in Montana this weekend and spilled an entire car of Coors Light and Blue Moon into an area near a river.

15:57and a photographer captured this fisherman who's on his boat. He rode up to the hundreds of cases of beer that had piled up. And this guy has a bottle of Coors Light in his hand with the biggest smile I've ever seen, truly looking like the happiest person in the world. So he won the weekend because he found, you know, hundreds of cases of free beer and he's just a really happy dude and I'm so happy for him. It is pure joy. Pure joy. You know he heard about it. He got his little robo out. I love the fact that it's a robo. Yeah, it's probably like 40 degrees crisp in Montana. Also over there, it's gorgeous where this train derailed.

16:32But it is also just zooming out to some more new stuff. It's kind of weird how we hear about train derailments all the time. Now they probably happened every day for the past 150 years, and we just didn't realize it. And now they're being reported on after the East Palestine one. Yeah, no, that is like an interesting ripple of the last news cycle. But I don't think we would have gotten that photo without it. So in a way, it's interesting. Yeah. Okay, Neil, that was a great winner. My winner of the weekend was actually a couple of April Fool's jokes. So honestly, April Fool's happened this weekend.

17:06It's usually the worst, like there's no good ones. But this year, I think there was two brands that actually killed it. The first one is actually Duolingo. So Duolingo, who already has this unhinged presence on TikTok and social media, released this high quality trailer for a reality TV show they call Love language and we'll actually play you a little clip of that trailer right now coming soon the hottest singles in the world will share a house in paradise in hopes of finding true love the catch none of them speak the same language

17:48introducing love language from duolingo and peacock do we have a parental guidance feature on our YouTube. That was a little spicy for 9 a.m. That's kind of the joke. Like, it's playing off Love Island, playing off all these reality TV shows. Honestly, no one fell for the April Fool's joke. They knew that they weren't making it, but everyone just respected how hardcore they went. Like, it is so well produced. And the worst part is, it could be true. Like, that's the root of every good April Fool's joke. It's like, eh, I could see it. So that was our first one. And then the second one, real quick, comes from an unlikely source, chess.com.

18:25So they posted a open application for its CEO position. And some of the requirements kind of made Twitter laugh. And I quote, applicants must be rated at least 1600 in online chess, have 10 plus years of management experience in tech or gaming, and not have an MBA from Harvard. So it just made people giggle a little bit. And honestly, this one did fool people. I was duped. Where people were like, they forgot it was April Fool's again. They saw these requirements like, wow, chess.com is hilarious. So those were two different approaches to April Fool's that I both think landed pretty well. Yeah, I like the one on chess.com that asked, what was your first memory of chess?

19:04In parentheses, required. I was thinking, yeah, that seems like a reasonable thing for a chess.com CEO to have. It's funny, yeah. So that was sort of our winners from the weekend. Great segment. Or maybe not. We'll see what the listeners think. Okay, but we're going to jump into our next story. So now this next story I know is very near and dear to your heart, Neil. So I'll quickly intro it and then kind of turn it over to you. So just before the weekend last week, Apple Music released its classical music app to the world. Now, this doesn't seem like big news, but classical music aficionados like yourself have been kind of going nuts over it.

19:38And Neil, I know that you were telling me about the problem and the struggle of listening to classical music on streaming apps. So take us through why this was a big deal. You set me up here big time, a lot of pressure. But this is a big deal because searching for classical music on Apple Music or Spotify was kind of like using Bing pre-Jad GPT integration. Streaming services are designed for pop songs, which only have a very limited amount data points, right? You have the song, the artist, and the album. That's it. Classical music has so much more metadata. It has the conductor, the work, the composer, the ensemble, the movement, the soloist, instrument.

20:14And then there's also a nickname. So searching for and surfacing something that's actually good and something you want to listen to is kind of a nightmare. So I want to give you a little example. Okay. Do you know this song?

20:29You know? Yeah, there you go. Okay. So that's called Rondo a la Turca. Okay. Turkish March. It's by Mozart. Except that what I just said is such the tip of the iceberg if you want to get a good recording of this. So that piece is actually part of Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 11 in A Major, K331. And Rondo a la Turca is just the third movement of that. And that's formerly called the Allegretto. Okay, so take all of that. That's all the data stringing together its name. And then you have thousands of actual performances that play that same piece of music. And only, you know, maybe 30 or 40 of them you want to listen to.

21:09And the rest is trash. It's like searching for Taylor Swift song and getting a bunch of random, you know, people covering in their bedroom. Yeah. So that's what it's like searching for for classical music and Apple music. What's this app called? Apple Music Classic. Apple Music Classic is, you know, making this a lot easier by giving us better metadata and allowing classical music enthusiasts to search and surface things that are actually good and important. See, this is why I turned it over to you because that example I would not have been able to produce. But yeah, it is truly setting the classical music world on fire because it's clear Apple put a lot of time and effort into this because you're right.

21:50It was such a difficult problem to solve. Like this metadata is crazy. If you start thinking about it, of course you couldn't find good stuff on Spotify. So yeah, it is interesting to see that Apple like devoted so much time and resources to it. So it will be interesting to see if they see a meaningful bump in like subscriptions to music and if this is going to be a game changer in the long term for them. Let's move on to what to watch for the week ahead. And there is so much this like this week is absolutely packed. I mean, tomorrow is going to be a zoo down in lower Manhattan because President Trump is coming to be arraigned for his indictment.

22:27And we'll actually learn the charges filed against him over. it's expected to be over these these hush money payments we'll get the mugshot we'll get the fingerprints but we're not gonna get like the handcuffed perp walk um because he is reportedly going to voluntarily give himself up for arraignment so if he hadn't he would be in handcuffs so still gonna be a crazy it's gonna be it's gonna be a circus down there uh tonight is the national championship game for the men's basketball tournament yukon versus san diego state we We called UConn. No one saw San Diego State. We called. You called UConn.

23:00I called UConn. You called UConn. But last night, we have talked about the women's basketball game, which was everyone was talking about. I'm still so mad at the refs. I cannot believe. They gave Caitlin Clark a technical for just the softest technical I've ever seen. Good game to LSU, but, like, I was really mad at the ref. This might have been women's college basketball's coming out party, as we talked about. I mean, it was all over social media. Everyone was talking about it, and this sport is growing. So exciting. I loved watching it. Um, oil prices will be in focus. They're actually jumping up 8 % this morning after OPEC plus a group of oil producing countries led by Saudi Arabia announced a production cut that sent prices spiking this morning.

23:37And that is not good for inflation or gas prices over here. So can't catch a break. Can't catch a break. As two guys who don't own cars, we can't catch a break. Yeah, I just like following it. And you know, people love to complain about it. So I'm sure we'll hear about it if gas prices do go up. That won't be for, you know, a couple weeks down the down the road. Spring holidays. So we got Passover on Wednesday, Easter on Sunday, and then Good Friday is on Friday, and the stock market will be closed then. It's always the wildest that Good Friday closes the market down. You always forget about it.

24:08Is it a federal holiday? I guess so. It's a bank holiday. That's really weird. Yeah, I'm hosting my first Seder, so I've got to go. I'm going to leave right now and go start cooking some matzo ball soup. What else we got? McDonald's is temporarily closing its offices this week ahead of expected layoffs, in its corporate division. Today, later today, NASA will reveal the four astronauts heading to the moon, around the moon, on the Artemis II mission, which is slated for November 2024. I would love to go. I'm excited about that too because we know the study that more kids want to be YouTubers now than astronauts, so maybe this might turn the tide back if they start going to the moon again.

24:46And then a tournament near and dear to our hearts. Masters tees off on Thursday. Tiger Woods is playing. I just hope he makes the cut. And then the March drop reports will be released on Friday. That could have just been our entire show. We're also hosting the final four for our best, greatest logo of all time. So head to our socials at MBDailyShow on Instagram and Twitter. Yeah, we have a final four. Final four, let's vote on that. Or you could just email us at MorningBrewDaily at MorningBrew.com. As always, a big mazel tov to our control room in the back and all the amazing people who work there.

25:20The show's producer and editor is Emily Milliron. The show's technical director is Justin Orlando. Our supervising producer is Bryce Beloff. Kelsey Jones is our kick-butt audio engineer. Hair and makeup is down by the courthouse, staking out a good spot for Trump's arraignment for us. Hair and makeup, so thoughtful. Devin Emery is our chief content officer, and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.

25:59The Limu Emu

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