🍷 “LeBrunello James” — NBA’s wine season. China’s marriage markets. Warner Bros’ bidding way. +6-pound phone case

0:28This is Nick. time. Jack, we have three fantastic stories for today's pod. What do you say we hit the T-boy? For our first story, the NBA season tipped off last night. Did you know that the NBA is the official league of drinking wine? Well, Jack, everything happens for a Riesling, and we think the NBA's wine embrace can save the industry. For our second story, Warner Brothers discovered their stock jumped 11 % yesterday on confirmation that this Hollywood legend is up for sale. Netflix, NBC, Paramount, the rumors are everyone's interested. And this deal could save lovely Los Angeles. And our third and final story.

1:06An old Chinese tradition is getting new attention. In-person marriage markets. Get this, instead of dating apps, parents are pitching their single kids in the park and it's working fantastic. But yetis, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. Fantastic. I love the mix of stories. Perfect mix for today's T-boy. We are all guilty of what I'm calling the eighth deadly sin. Ah, yes, Jack. Yes, Jack. Yes, Jack. Are you talking about too much time spent on our phones? Too much screen time on our phones. I know what you mean. Now, we all have those 15-minute social media app timers that we ignore.

1:40Or you could lock your phone inside of a box. How about you give your phone to your roommate and tell them to bury it in the park? That'll do the trick. Hey, buddy, Timmy, don't give it back to me for at least three days. We actually found the best way to limit your phone use. And here it is. It's a solution so obvious, it's genius. And so genius, it is obvious. A six pound phone case. That's right. An iPhone case so heavy, you don't want to pick it up. This is a real invention from Logan Ivy. A six pound iPhone case. Get this. Stainless steel, four inches thick. A six pound case that fits your iPhone, baby.

2:16Part phone case, part dumbbell. Oh, you got a phone call? Uh-huh. You're going to have to pick that thing up with your legs. Oh, you get a text, get ready for a bicep workout. You want to scroll 30 more seconds on Instagram? Make sure to change into gym shorts first, because you're going to start sweating. You're going to break a hammy on this one. Now, stepping back for a second, the six pound phone case, it highlights a strategy that Nick and I love. The low-tech solution to the high-tech problem. And Jack, I believe your mom is the pioneer of the low-tech solution to a high-tech problem. My mom, when she was traveling for a while, she would leave a note on the counter that said, dinner's in the oven, boys.

2:51I'll be home soon. It made the robber think that people were coming home any second. Jennifer was thinking three stacks ahead of these guys. Here's another one, Nick. Put a fake security camera up on your house. It does the same job as a real security camera. I like what you're putting out. Elegant low-tech solution to a high-tech problem. And the six-pound iron iPhone case is one of those two. Besties, if you got a low-tech solution to a high-tech problem, then Jack and I want to hear it. It's my favorite dinner table category conversation. Drop it in the comments. We'll get it on the pod. But Jack, let's hit our three stories.

3:51Start the show. First, a quick word from our sponsor.

4:02Gusto. One sec, Yetis. We just need to take a break from the pod for a moment to find that I-9C3 IRS tax form for each employee. And then, Jack, we got to make sure each coworker is countersigned, I think. Oh, yeah, yeah. And then we have to track down each employee and make sure they know their health insurance options. Oh, right. Right. Did everyone know open enrollment ends tomorrow? Nope. No one did. Yetis, we are just podcast hosts. We also run a media company here and full-time employees mean full-time benefits too. Which means roughly 46 ,000 forms, documents, and tasks to process for each team member.

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5:05Try Gusto today at gusto.com slash tboy and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com slash tboy. One more time, gusto.com slash tboy. Monarch. Happy wedding season to all those who celebrate. Wedding season. That means you just liquidated your 401k to pay for that bridesmaid dress. Yeah, flights, hotel, and a gift. Your presents. It was not the only present. Good timing though, because Monarch is the personal finance app that tracks everything. Your accounts, your investments, your savings goals, and your spending. We use Monarch to keep all our personal finances accounted for and in one place.

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6:18For our first story, with the NBA season tipping off this week, we're looking at the NBA's love affair with wine. Because the NBA has become the official league for drinking and collecting wine, and we'll tell you how. All right, we had the NFL, then the NHL, Now we got the NBA tipped off with two games just last night. What else we got this week, Jack? Houston at OKC and Warriors and Lakers were last night. There's more debut games coming tonight, tomorrow, and through the weekend. And the big storylines this season, is it LeBron's last year? Will NBC's$27 billion TV deal pay off? Are the Knicks going to win two games in a row?

6:58But besties, the bigger story that no one else is talking about, what is it, Jack? Wine. By the way, Knicks are like a favorite this year, Nick. Could be a good year for the Knicks. Yeah, I've heard that before. But besties, this is the first year the NBA has had an official winery. And that winery is Kendall Jackson. While the NFL is a beer league, Major League Baseball is both beer and whiskey. The NBA is all about the vino. Pure play vino. We're talking National Brunello Association over here. Sauvignon chilled slam dunks. Served by Le Brunello James. Okay. By the way, Kendall Jackson, when I worked at the Olive Garden, it was top shelf on the menu.

7:38It's the ninth biggest vineyard in America, and it's the most sold Chardonnay every single year here since 1992. And when Jack and I studied the business of Kendall Jackson, the winery, we described it as the, you could say, Dikembe Mutombo of wine, right, Jack? It's bold, it's big, it's mainstream appeal. Now, besties, what Jack and I find fascinating about this story is that while other pro sports leagues have wine deals already, the NBA has had a wine obsession for 30 years. And it started with Greg Popovich, the head coach of the San Antonio Spurs who won five championships. He celebrated each one with a glass of burgundy.

8:12If you wanted to get playing time with Coach Popovich, you had to bring a pinot into the locker room. In 2007, Carmelo Anthony got into wine while playing for the Denver Nuggets. And now Melo has his own wine brand. In 2017, LeBron James started posting pics of his weekly wine indulgences on Instagram. Yeah, and when he did, the labels of those Cabernets actually jumped by triple digits. But the year that the NBA and wine really started their situationship was 2020. Ah, pour me out a sweet serving of... Why is this, Jack? That's when the secret wine club of the NBA was exposed by ESPN. Get this.

8:49During the pandemic, the NBA was playing in a bubble over at Disney World. They were cut off from the rest of society. And one player for the New Orleans team brought 84 bottles of wine to his hotel room because they were so bored they just sipped wine. CJ McCollum, he turned his hotel room into a makeshift wine fridge. True story. He cranked the AC down to 55 degrees to keep the wine just right. Well, then the Kendall Jackson Winery found out about this and sent 50 cases to the NBA bubble of a bunch of bubbling. With a QR code to show tasting videos to all the players. Boom, the players got hooked.

9:26The Cleveland Cavaliers, their whole team went to Napa just for tastings the next year. And now Dwayne Wade, Yao Ming, Michael Jordan, they all have their own wine labels. JJ Reddick and LeBron James, yeah, they did a pod together drinking two bottles of vintage vino during the whole episode. Sanchovese. And so now, Kendall Jackson is making it official what's been unofficial for decades. Forget Gatorade. If you want to make it to the NBA Finals, you're going to need a half-chilled bottle of Chateau to pump it enough. Enough of that pronunciation, Nick. Never again. Jack's spoken like the wine salesman of the month at the Olive Garden.

9:58So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in the wine industry? When your business is 8 ,000 years old, lean into it. Yeti's alcohol sales, they're at an all-time low. And wine, it's been hit the hardest. Americans drank 18 % less wine last year than in 2021, the lowest in over a decade. Wine has been the most hit for a few reasons. Wine is the highest price, it's the most inconvenient to drink, and it's the least approachable to the masses. But we noticed one quote from an NBA wine fanatic, the player Jimmy Butler, that shows a way to save the industry. The reason Jimmy Butler likes wine so much is that he can never know everything about it.

10:37He says wine is infinite. it. Jack Daniels whiskey, you know what you're getting. Craft IPAs, similar story. But wine has complexity and mystery. It might be a weakness right now, but it's been a strength in the long run. After all, Jack, wine is the oldest form of alcohol. It is a well-aged business model. I still want to watch the YouTube video of the first guys who figured out you could turn grapes into wine. I hope they posted it. Instead of chasing trends like ready-to-drink cocktail cans, low or no alcohols, or probiotic functional beverages, wine should lean into its differentiator, which is its complexity.

11:13What NBA players love about wine is its real differentiators, even if they're not trending right now. For our second story, Warner Brothers Discovery just confirmed that three companies are interested in acquiring it. This is the latest Hollywood gossip, and it's worth$40 billion. We've got a bidding war for Harry Potter and Game of Thrones. But the real winner could be the city of Los Angeles. Besties, this story reminds us of prom. Because Warner Brothers has so many proposals, they're the most popular girl at school right now, man. I would have loved multiple prom date options. Never had that.

11:51Warner Brothers Discovery stock. It's up 11 % on Tuesday after confirming for the first time it's received multiple acquisition offers. We knew that Paramount was interested in buying Warner Brothers Discovery, but here's the news. new reports that say Netflix and Comcast are interested too. And with three parties interested in buying this media icon, CEO David Zaslav has made his next negotiating move. If he's going to sell, he might as well see if there's any other offers out there. So he went public yesterday, announcing the company is for sale. So Jack, could Apple acquire Warner Brothers?

12:25We know Apple wants to be a prestige streamer. They'd be that for sure if they had HBO. Or Jack, could Comcast acquire Warner Brothers? Comcast owns Universal Studios theme parks. They'd love that Harry Potter and Game of Thrones IP. Jack, I know you're a Netflix shareholder, so you're drooling at this one, but what about Netflix? Would they buy them? Netflix prefers to build, not buy. But buying Batman, Superman, DC Comics, and eliminating HBO Max as a competitor sounds pretty tempting for Netflix. Where is he? Well, he's being bought by Netflix. But Hollywood is a town that runs on gossip. So while the interested companies matter, the interested people matter just as much.

13:10And besties, Jack and I think that ultimately it makes the most sense for Paramount to buy Warner Brothers. But personal grudges could prevent that from happening. And the reason? Because Paramount is backed by the Ellison family, which appears willing to pay anything for more power right now. They already bought CBS News. Now they want to buy CNN and another Hollywood studio. Also, Jack, the Ellisons might end up buying TikTok through Oracle, right? Like we've said on previous pods, it would be an insane consolidation of power if the Ellisons get Warner Brothers Discovery, TikTok, and CBS. But Warner Brothers CEO David Zaslav does not want to sell to Paramount first because he'd get kicked out as CEO.

13:49Zas is the ultimate Hollywood mogul. Oh, I'm picturing the vest in Sun Valley, Idaho, enjoying the spa treatments, Jack. He does not want to be out as the CEO of a Hollywood studio. The other Warner Brothers shareholder, John Malone, owner of the Atlantic Braves, Formula One, and 2.2 million acres of American land. He already said that he wants Warner Brothers Discovery to split into two companies for tax purposes. Oh, and Jack, then there's Brian Roberts of Comcast. What does he want in this deal? Remember in 2019, Comcast and Disney were in a bidding war to acquire Fox? Well, Brian is still butthurt that Disney got Fox and not Comcast.

14:26So he might bid on buying Warner Brothers just to drive up the price and hurt whoever ends up buying it in the end. Basically, he might bid on Warner Brothers just out of spite. Like we said, it's gossipy and the people matter. So Jackal, what's the takeaway for our buddies watching the sale of Warner Brothers? The biggest winner of the Warner Brothers Discovery bidding war could be the city of Los Angeles. Yetis, earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal ran this article. Los Angeles' entertainment economy is looking like a disaster movie. Because since 2023, studios have cut production to pursue profits in the streaming era.

15:02But Jack and I think this bidding war will end with Paramount winning. And with the second richest person in the world owning it, Paramount doesn't seem to care about profits at all. Larry and David Ellison, they care about power and ambition. And that could actually be good for the Hollywood working industry. Because when a new big money buyer enters a market, pay and employment tend to go up. And Paramount's splurge on Hollywood assets could force Netflix and Disney to pay more to compete. Bad for corporate profits, but good for Hollywood's entertainment industry. It might feel like the late 20-teens again, when there were booming payouts for actors, directors, scriptwriters, and crews.

15:39Everyone was getting a show. McConaughey, you got another script! And with the Ellison family Trump aligned, production could come back from overseas to the United States. And that, besties, why we think the biggest winner of the Warner Brothers bidding war could actually be the city of lovely Los Angeles. Now, a quick word from our sponsor. Decagon. Am I still on hold? What am I doing? It's been like 15 minutes. Am I still on hold? Hello? Excuse me? No. No, I don't need to hear my list of options again. Yeah, it is. Decagon helps companies create personalized concierge style customer experiences with AI agents across chat, email, voice, and SMS.

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16:50Ready to transform your customer support? Go to decagon.ai slash tboy to get a personalized demo and see what Decagon can do for your team. Check Decagon out at decagon.ai slash tboy. That's decagon.ai slash tboy. Walmart business. Yetis, we cover business trends on our show and they move faster than you can spell GPU. you. One minute it's vibe coding, the next it's agentic. Tomorrow it's probably going to be in-person old school again. Yeah, well, while you're managing this to stay ahead, the last thing you need to worry about is supplies for your company. Carol, do we have the cogs needed to meet our Q1 sales commitments?

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17:59It's Walmart built for your business. Sign up for a free Walmart business account today at business.walmart.com. For our third and final story, despite digital everything, in-person marriage markets are the rage in China. Not flea markets, fiance markets. And it's actually perfect capitalism happening in communist China. Oh, Yeti's swipe fatigue, Tinder intolerance, bumbled burnout. Jack and I have been covering the trend for a few years now. Finding love in the U.S. ain't easy. But in China, marriage rates are at all-time lows and they're dropping each year. 1.4 billion people in the country put just 6 million marriages last year.

18:44That's down 21 % from the year before to an all-time low for China. In fact, the wedding rate in China is 50 % lower than America's already low wedding rate. With a tough economy and tough job prospects, for many in China, it feels like happily never after. China is going through a bouquet recession. So the Wall Street Journal just reported on China's wedding winter. For young people, they don't seem too worried about it, to be honest. Okay, yeah, but Jack, for the parents, they're panicking right now. The parents want to become grandparents. And Nick, what's the greatest force in capitalism? Well, I would have said supply and demand, Jack.

19:23No, it's two motivated mothers. Yeah, that's the greatest force in capitalism. And here's the news. The new trend for couples in China is to get married using an old tradition, in-person marriage markets. Or as the Wall Street Journal summed it up, the hottest dating app in China is a park. The Chinese refer to these as Xingqin Zhao's, which translates to matchmaking corner. Parents meeting up in public parks to try to find leads for their single kids to marry. It's literally a park full of parents carrying resumes, pitching their perfect child to someone else's mother. And these parents are not messing around, Jack, right?

20:01They get right to the point. They share their child's age, their height, their weight, their income. Maybe a photo, maybe not. And these parents are not shy either when it comes to what they're looking for either, right, Jack? They share that they're looking for someone with this height, this income, no tattoos. They'll even say, not too chubby. You might even see like mission statements on some of the resumes as you're walking by. Our son is kind. He has a good hairline. He's 175 pounds, makes 20 ,000 a year, and makes his own bed every morning. And now full disclosure, when I was in China in 2018, I walked into one of these marriage markets in Beijing.

20:34And Jack, the parents actually will hold umbrellas and they'll put the resumes on the umbrellas as like an efficient way to go around and interact and pitch. It's a walking billboard for little Billy. Not so little anymore. Besties, this resurgence of the Chinese marriage market, it's also ironic for a few interesting reasons. First, it's the opposite of the internet. You're meeting up in real life. And it's also the opposite of Tinder and Bumble because parents make the first move. But most ironic of all, China is a communist country. But what this market represents is pure capitalism. And it is fascinating.

21:07So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in the Chinese marriage market? The Chinese marriage market is the definition of an efficient market. Now, Yadis, on day one of economics, you learn to define a perfectly competitive market. And you learn that perfectly competitive markets result in efficient outcomes, meaning supply meets demand. Now, here's the problem. You know, that rarely exists in the real world. It's just a model that econ students use to understand the basics. But it does exist in the Chinese marriage market, doesn't it, Nick? Yes, it does, Jack. You've got, first, many buyers and sellers with no single buyer or seller able to sway the market.

21:45Second, you've got no barriers to entry to this market. Anyone can come with a printed resume of their kid. But Jack, there also are no transaction costs in this marriage market. People are free to exchange information and arrange a meeting between their two children. Sebasti's add it all up, and the Chinese marriage market is the definition of an efficient capital market. The biggest communist country in the world is demonstrating perfect capitalism. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us for the ceviche Wednesday? day. The NBA just tipped off with an official wine partner for the first time, Kendall Jackson Wineries.

22:21The NBA players love wine's complexity, even if it's not trending right now. For our second story, Warner Brothers is up for sale. At least three companies are interested in buying it, and three big personalities are behind it too. The biggest winner of the Hollywood bidding war could be the city of lovely Los Angeles. And our third and final story, Chinese marriage markets are the rage in China to combat low marriage rates. They're using the forces of the markets to solve the matrimony. But besties, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. Uh, first, OpenAI's newest launch, ChatGPT Atlas, their first web browser with ChatGPT at the very center.

23:01And the homepage is not google.com, like every other browser, it's ChatGPT. Honestly, the biggest reason we don't use chat more often is that it is separate from our web browser, Chrome. But starting today, they can be one in the same. And second, Beyond Meat has become a meme stock. And shockingly, I stole the stock, Jack. I kind of forgot about it. Mick and I bought the stock on its IPO day in 2019 on hopes of a plant-based future. Yeah, but since then, the industry's fallen. We don't really eat plant-based meat and it's basically become a penny stock. But in the last five days, the stock has 6X'd on coordinated buying from retail investors on Reddit.

23:43This is a classic short squeeze. I didn't buy and hold. I bought. I forgot. And then I held. And finally, peanut allergies are officially down. And it's all tied to the year 2015. And why is that, Jack? That's when the United States changed their guidance to parents that parents should give kids peanut exposure early and often under the age of three. The result, peanut allergies in kids under three have fallen by 27%, and they're down overall by 40%. It's a health policy win worth celebrating, but I got to say, I still aggressively clean my kids' hands and mouths before they go to school. My kids aren't in school yet, but I was going to say, don't tell Molly, but I did sneak maxi like peanut butter, I think at like one month old.

24:26I think the guidance says starting at four months. It may have been bad parenting. It may have been a mistake. Now time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Shanil Kalan from Winchester, Virginia, and this is related to Monday's epic internet outage. When Amazon Web Services first launched its cloud computing platform, most people didn't understand the cloud in the internet sense because it was the early 2000s. Yeah, no one knew what it meant. So one of the first big users of Amazon Web Services was shockingly a dating site for ferret owners. Billions in future enterprise infrastructure was tested first as a furry matchmaking startup.

25:07Romantic rodents paved the way for today's modern internet. Yetis, you look fantastic for Ceviche Wednesday. So remember, we want you to leave a comment with your low-tech solutions to some high-tech problems. Remember when Zuckerberg put the post-it note on his laptop's camera to make sure no one was snooping on him? Yeah, that was another classic example. Oh, and by the way, Jennifer, if you're listening, Jack's mom, you're the best at this. So please, we expect you to leave a comment. Dinner's in the oven. I'll be home any minute, boys. If you know, you know.

25:44And before we go, a happy 11th birthday to legendary Eddie and Nicholas Fetzner over in Boca Raton, Florida, listening on the way to school right now. You got this, Nicholas. Happy birthday to Janelle Coles in Chandler, Arizona. She is killing it on the pregnancy with baby Wren, which will be included in the Coles Annual Family Meeting. Side note, Nicholas, love how you spell Nicholas. And Vanessa Clark down in Orlando, Florida, is listening since 2021, walking her corgi and celebrating the best birthday yet. And happy birthday to Larry T. in Brooklyn, New York, who's celebrating with some bowling.

26:17Make it a turkey. And to anyone else celebrating something today, make it a T-boy. Celebrate the wins.

26:25This is Jack. I own stock of Bumble, Netflix, Disney, and Reddit. Nick own stock of Beyond Meat, and we both own stock of Apple. Beer-o premium non-alcoholic beer. All right, Yetis, a little behind the scenes here. Before our New York City live show back in April, Jack and I went sober for two weeks. True story. Couldn't risk getting sick. I didn't want to be groggy. I couldn't afford a hangover. It was New York, baby. Okay, but Jack, celebrating the wins is what we do. And so for our live shows, we crack open something special. So we drank Biro, the premium non-alcoholic beer brand co-founded by Tom Holland.

26:59Yeah, I actually first saw it at my grocery store. Delicious tastes like a celebration, feels fantastic, and looks legit. More on the looks in a sec. And if it's good enough for the actor who played Spider-Man, it's good enough for us. You see, it pairs well with a pickleball game, a profitable earnings report, or with the best podcast. So, Yetis, if you want to celebrate the wins with all the taste of a premium lager or IPA, but none of the alcohol, there's no better choice than Bureau. Okay, pause the pod. Did we mention the can is straight up gold? This thing will stand out at every one of your next parties.

27:30Trust us, we've done it. Only beer we know that actually upgrades the scene like a promotion. So, Bastis, if there's a win you're celebrating every day, Bureau is the non-alcoholic brew brand you got to bring. So, use code T-Boy for 20 % off your first order at BureauBrewing.com.