The Rock Enters His Country Music Era

0:00The Rest is Entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy. Now, one talent can make a career. Three usually gets you an official title. Yep, and that official title is a triple threat. You'd call triple threat anyone who can act, sing and dance. Now, these days, three can seem almost modest. The same person might write, direct, produce and have another career on the side. J-Lo would be a triple threat, huge music career, started as a dancer, huge acting career as well. It's an amazing talent to be able to have. And now, drinks mogul as well. Is she? You have to be the mogul now. I think the mogul is always the third thing now.

0:37So she's a quadruple threat. Yeah, I sing, I act, and I have a lifestyle portal. But that phrase, all singing or dances, it escaped entertainment and now it's used for anyone and anything that does several jobs very well all at once. Which is a pretty fair description of Octopus. It's the UK's largest energy supplier, one of the country's biggest installers of heat pumps, solar panels and batteries, and it runs a major electric car leasing business for good measure. I mean, that's a quadruple threat, isn't it? Yeah, that's a quadruple threat. Late night bites with friends? Already hard to beat.

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2:07Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me Marina High And me Richard Osmond, hello everyone, hello Marina Hello Richard, how are you? I'm very well, lovely to have you back I'm very happy to be back together Yeah, I mean I know you'd rather be somewhere sunny but you know it's nice But I like us to be together Yeah exactly, there are advantages An entertaining podcast is what we promised this week, what are we talking about? We're talking about lots of big sports franchises have just been bought by people we've actually heard of. Jeff Bezos has bought a bit of Liverpool, among others.

2:43And Bob Iger, former Disney CEO, has bought the Lakers, among others. And why? And why? We're going to discuss. Let's get into it. We're also going to discuss, we spoke a couple of years ago about micro dramas. And now they are literally everywhere. And they started in China. and you'll be surprised to learn that there are developments in the Chinese microdrama industry which I think people will find interesting. Yes, and we're also going to be checking in on, as you know, my favourite cultural polymath, The Rock. Friend of the podcast. Friend of the podcast, whether or not he knows it, and what he's up to at the moment.

3:21There are musical developments. Oh yeah, he's got new plans. He's got new plans. He has got new plans. We start with sports organisations and sports rights. Now, I had an idea a little while ago. I thought one day on the podcast, we should do, what's the best way to make a billion dollars in media? So say we had to start today, and in a year's time, we had to have built something that would make us a billion dollars. I thought, oh, that'd be an interesting item. So I was sort of thinking it through, and it brings together lots of things we talk about. And then it's been blown out of the water this week by a man called Mark Walter, who is CEO of a company called Guggenheim.

3:56and he bought the LA Lakers, one of the biggest basketball teams in existence, one of the most sports franchises anywhere in the world for$10 billion and he sold them last week for$12.5 billion. So he has made$2.5 billion in a year for sort of doing nothing at all and the question is why and the question is firstly why did he spend$10 billion on the LA Lakers in the first place why is it worth that and secondly why as you say have bob eiger former disney man and josh kushner so certainly we didn't hear so much um until a few years ago why have they teamed up to buy it for 12.5 yeah you hear it all the time now this guy's like the bloody zealot of our culture isn't he you hear him he's everywhere we've got jared who's currently in the middle east um solving that issue and we've got josh who has bought the la lakers right and yeah josh kushner is jared Kushner's brother, but politically very different, apparently.

4:53Josh Kushner is something of a Democrat, they say. Something of a. Yeah. Albeit a Democrat with a$2 billion stake in open AI, but it's something. Yes. Yeah. Whereas Jared is less of a Democrat, I think. Yeah. I mean, I think he would probably try and say that he's kind of politically agnostic. Yeah. But I think it feels like he's got a touch of the Republican about him. Touch of it. Just a little touch. The father, who is Charles Kushner, he first came into the media when he was jailed for a number of things, including hiring prostitutes to try and seduce his brother-in-law in a blackmail pact.

5:31It will shock you to learn part A of what happened next, which is Trump pardoned him. It will shock you further to learn that part B of that was Trump then made him ambassador to France. That's a family to be part of. What an elegant diplomatic posting, that one is. So Josh Kushner runs a company called Thrive Capital. And Thrive Capital are a venture capital firm. They were very early investors in Instagram. They've got a huge holding in open AI. So they invest in tech stocks and things like that. They now have an arm called Thrive Eternal. And Thrive Eternal, which for a company who hugely, hugely invested in AI, Thrive Eternal is essentially trying to find any company that will not be destroyed by AI.

6:13What, as a hedge against their other investments? They're enormous investments in everything else. And sports media is the big thing. And this is the bit that Bob Iger, who was the long-time legendary chairman of Disney from 2005 to the end of last year, was widely seen as one of their greatest ever leaders. He's a visionary. If Bob Iger's doing something, you should pay attention. Now, Mark Walter, so this guy, he's just made two and a half billion in a year. So he buys the LA Lakers. You know, he owns loads of different sporting things. He owns a bit of Chelsea as well. he has not done anything particularly difficult in the last year and he's made$2.5 billion that tells you everything about sport he bought this thing,$10 billion he's going to keep it forever he was then being investigated by the federal tax authorities and various other things needed a bit of quick cash Glenn gets a phone call from Bob Iger and Josh Kushner saying would you sell us the LA Lakers he's like well actually I do need some quick cash how much have we got they say 12 and a half billion it's done in three days the whole deal is done in three days yes incredibly quick and it was worth 10 billion to mark walter for sure it's definitely worth 12 and a half billion to kushner and eiger as well it's there there will be a ceiling to this but we haven't got close to that ceiling yet it is a small amount of franchises a really small asset class there are more billionaires than there are sports franchises there are more viewers out there who want to watch sport than want to watch anything else.

7:47And there's more loyalty in those viewers. So the money, we sort of even haven't scraped the surface of it yet, I think. And there's a big debate as to whether sports rights are now just too expensive, prohibitively expensive, and not delivering the value that they should at those prices. So why are people paying all this money? Why is Bezos also, he's part of a consortium, essentially, who's going to buy control in Liverpool. So they bought a small stake now, and they have the right... They bought a third, again. And the people they've bought it off, Fenway Sports Group, have made a huge profit on that.

8:20They bought it for, I think,$406 million. And it's now valued somewhere around$7.5,$8 billion. And you think that feels like quite a lot of money. But there's a unique set of things in our media universe that means that these companies are worth an awful lot of money. I mean, they're insanely expensive. And, you know, they're probably going to get a bit more expensive. There will be a ceiling, of course. But, you know, when you've got people like Jeff Bezos with this stake in Liverpool, you know, he owns one of the bidders for sports rights. I mean, there's a virtuous circle there somewhere that, you know, people can keep pumping money around the same engine.

8:56And obviously, both of these, Disney own ESPN, but Amazon are now showing games themselves. So you can see why there's this idea of synergies between not just the e-commerce side of it and the tech side of it. they're trying to get into actual owning the rights. The biggest thing is the scarcity of sports franchises. It feels like unfettered capitalism. It feels like, oh, these guys, you know what? These guys are actually pushing out on their own and they're spending all this money and good for them. Actually, what they're doing, they're buying into sort of a socialist collective. Well, yes, because, and actually it's interesting because what Iger could have done and what people thought he was going to do, this is a surprise, this particular bill, was that they're going to have a new franchise in Vegas.

9:39Vegas don't have a basketball team, blah, blah. So they were going to do one of those. And, you know, you can buy in at the start. And they thought that he was going to buy that. In fact, he's done, you know, like when people say, rather in the way when actually the first people to have bought Liverpool, those dreadful ones that they got rid of eventually, Hicks and Gillett, when they said, you know, you can't buy whatever it was, 120 years of history, what, you can. Yes, you really can. It depends how much money you've got. And so, yes, they are buying these big, big things. In the same way that Liverpool is now the top-earning Premier League club, it's the fourth most valuable club in the world.

10:15So there are very few of these things. Yes, and that's why they're so valuable. It's scarcity. This is why rich people have always invested in fine art or classic cars, because it is finite. There are not any more of those things being made. It's a very small asset group of things, and sport is that. So if we wanted to set up a chicken restaurant tomorrow, we could. And we could go on a high street that's already got eight chicken restaurants. It doesn't matter. And if we make better chicken than everyone else, we'll make money. And that's supposed to be capitalism. We couldn't tomorrow go and set up a Premier League football team.

10:43You know, it would be impossible. You could sort of set up a minor one and, you know, take 15 years to go through the leagues and become a Premier League football team. But you can't do it. You can't go and buy and you can't set up your own NFL team. As always, I should have realised, of course, the easiest way to make a billion dollars is already have$300 billion. That's because then it's very easy to make a billion. So people are buying into these in the same way that they used to buy into classic cars or fine art. JP Morgan looked at every single billionaire on their books and what those people earned.

11:14And 20 % of their billionaires had a controlling interest in some sort of sports team somewhere. And over 30 % had some interest in a sports arena or a sports team, which is more than now invest in fine art or cars. It's like one of the biggest asset classes now. If you're a billionaire, the safest place to put your money is sport. and the safest place is sport because it is protected. Because there's not going to be any more of them. Because the media rights, which is where it's interesting to us, the media rights are sort of held in a cartel. Which is, you know, if you're an NFL team, you all join together and sell those media rights to one particular buyer.

11:52You know, you can't, you know, the LA Lakers can't go off and do their own ones. A smaller team can't do their own ones. It's all cartelized. The whole thing is incredibly anti-capitalist. And that's why it's worth so much money. You add in then, of course, this insane level of kind of fandom that you get around the world. You say, okay, it's great. We've got fandom around the world. But, you know, BTS could very, very easily be superseded in a few years by four other K-pop bands. Whereas the LA Lakers can't be because there's not going to be any more teams. Or if there'd be one or two. So it's literally, you've got, you can plan for the future.

12:24You can plan, you know, forever and ever. And the absolute key to it, as you say, it's Thrive Eternal. it is AI proof it is live unscripted entertainment which is something that AI can't do and all of these billionaires worked out quite a long time ago like with Live Nation you know concerts and things like that the thing to invest in now which I think is good news is humanity, it's things that are real it's things that will bring people together, it's things that AI can't do, things that a computer can't do and that's one of the many, you know, if you add all those things together that's why this guy has just earned two and a half billion dollars for doing absolutely nothing.

13:04And it all ties into the fact that, you know, the Netflix's of this world are paying huge premiums for live events now. That's the stuff that they really, really want. You know, for example, they're doing this brilliant new Luke Littler show. Have you read about this? Yes. Where 20 amateurs take on Luke Littler over one leg. And if any of them win, they win£501 ,000. And that's just a big, big live. Oh my God, everyone's going to be watching. The big, big live event. And those are incredibly important to all the streamers and all the channels. You look at the BBC last week with the European Athletics Championships, just such huge ratings for them, far and above the stuff that it was replacing at almost every turn.

13:39These things are incredibly important. At a time where you're not getting 15 million for something anymore, if you get something that can really, really get you 3, 4 million, and these sports things can, there's absolute gold dust for absolutely everyone. You can see where the money's coming from. Yes. Yes. I also think that there's something, I mean, it's weird when you think back to, I mean, really just a few years ago and people would be completely cringed out if anyone called football a product or content or anything like that. Or franchise. Now they really think of it, not lots of the fans, because of course lots of fans are opposed to this, we can get onto that.

14:18But they think of it as IP. These people think of it as IP. And it's interesting because there is so much money in entertainment. If you think of sport as a branch of entertainment, there is so much money in entertainment. And think of the other things that, say, Bezos has bought, Prime bought, all of the Tolkien stuff. But you've got to get a show like The Rings of Power going. James Bond. Yeah. Again, that one is you've got to get it going. It's still a risk every time it goes out there. Sport is not a risk in the same way because you have these incredibly invested fans. You have a huge history.

14:55You have archive, library, everything. It's an amazing asset in terms of it constantly regenerates. It constantly regenerates its stories. It can be always on. It's interesting what clearly Liverpool are attracted. By the way, also, lots of clubs, in terms of particularly in football, are thinking, okay, other people are owned by Petro States and they're backed by this kind of thing. in order to stay competitive, you know, we need money, we need these things, we need inward investment. But what they're really attracted to in terms of the Bezos consortium, which is not just Bezos, it's Amit Bhatia and Eduardo Savarin, who's one of the...

15:36Yes, who Andrew Garfield played in the social network. In the social network. He's one of the Facebook founders. He's buying it. Yeah. And they like how global they are in terms of e-commerce and tech and all of those things. and the way that you can, particularly in India and Asia, in places that they consider still to be unexploited, underexploited markets. Then you see with someone like Bob Iger, what Bob Iger has done. Bob Iger understood franchises and how massive they were in quite a sort of early way compared to lots of other people in Hollywood. If you think what he did, maybe some of the biggest moves he did were to bring in under the Disney marquee, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars.

16:17Those are all Iger deals. When you buy this stuff and then you exploit it across the parks, the cruises, the merchandise. Well, I was going to say, that's the other thing that Iger really, really understands is he sat at the top of a company that people thought just made cartoons. And he was able to look at the books and understand quite how much of Disney's fortunes rely on theme parks and cruise ships and real people going to real places to do real things and have real experiences. So that's absolutely in his DNA, which is why he also he sees sport as such an incredibly good fit for becoming much, much, much richer.

16:47Yes. And as we said, it's the other thing that's sort of interesting about it is that we know it is appointment to view. We know that people come and they watch it live. You can make it global like they have with Liverpool. And it's this enduring IP. And the other thing about it, as you say, is it has already been created by somebody else. I mean, by the way, so had Marvel and Pixar and Star Wars when he bought them under the Disney marquee. The Lakers is a long story and it is an amazing, I mean, you know, it's very cool. The Lakers is cool. It is cool. Here's the thing to imagine. It's much cooler than the new Vegas team.

17:24Yes, it is. We don't know about it. But here's the reason sports is so crazy and here's the reason sports is becoming so profitable. Imagine you could buy Taylor Swift. Imagine you could buy Taylor Swift and you were assured that there were only going to be 20 other pop stars for the next 15 or 20 years. So you controlled her. There's only going to be 20 other pop stars and you could take all the money. That's what buying a sports team is. And imagine that all of those pop stars join together. And anytime you wanted to hear a record or see a video, they all had to agree and they all got paid all at the same time.

18:00you know that's what sport is which is absolutely insane it's incredibly expensive but it is in some ways i think the least risky bet in entertainment because as i say all these other things that they might be building up under their streaming banners or wherever it is it might fail in fact you know as you always say most most things fail yes exactly this is something that isn't going to fail because even if it's a disaster this many people are still invested in it there is a huge amount and as we said there's more entertainment out there than there ever has been and lots of it is incredibly expensive but it's unclear the value of lots of that entertainment i mean what would happen now they've over you know disney over exploited star wars what is the value of that now i mean i would argue that it's it's problematic and it's overvalued um but also i mean the other thing which is a whole separate podcast item really is the cost of the sports rights so the nba wants to be a platform and they've got an 11-year deal with disney nbc universal and amazon so the nba is a national basketball association now the rights to show the games of which some of the games are lakers games are 76 billion i mean there is a lot of debate now and we know this in football we know certainly you know it's in the nfl is it actually worth it what people are having to pay people have always historically thought it was worth you know cbs have thought to have the nfl kind of going through their pipes is worth it for the halo effect but it is so unbelievably expensive and you can see that it's getting parcel down and the rights packages are becoming more sort of you know you don't get all of it some of it goes as we see some games go to amazon some games go to wherever but it's all appointment to view yeah i think it's better to buy the franchise than it is to be on the site to be on the buy side if you're trying to get the rights because the rights are so expensive now and there is a big debate on what what people do about the rights because it's just so completely, I mean, I don't want to say it's extortionate, but we did talk about cartels.

19:58Yeah, I mean, it sort of is a cartel. And it's hard because as a fan, actually, the idea of there being a fixed amount of franchises really, really works. That's why football really, really works. It's why the NFL really works because there are a certain group of teams and you choose your one. If there are new ones coming along every five seconds, it sort of muddies the water a bit. Actually, it really, really works for fans. What doesn't work for fans is, of course, as soon as you have a small group of teams, small group of franchises, and they have this incredible economic power and they can, you know, sell the rights for huge amounts of money.

20:27They also can charge you whatever they want. Yeah, and they can make you buy lots of different subscriptions, as we've seen now, which people hate even more. In order to get everything, they've got to have lots of different subscriptions, whereas before they could get one package. Yeah, and every year you've got three different new kits. You know, there's lots and lots of ways of taking that fan base and making money out of them, which would not be the case if there were loads of competing franchises that could happen all the time but i think the whole the whole point of sport is that there are a small amount of franchises and we all know what they are we all know where they are we all know which one our local one is so i get that but it is absolutely being uh it's it's like it's like kind of cows coming across a meadow no one's ever seen before this is literally just full of grass that is going to last them forever and ever and ever when i read the baser story i was like oh my god are the same five guys going to just own everything, whatever it is.

21:19It's like, I find it very, very depressing. And I do think that there's a reason why these richest men all want these kind of, doesn't have to be just sport. There are obviously the entertainment things as well, but there's something particular about sport that it seems like it's a sort of nexus of politics and business and entertainment. And if you looked at the recent World Cup and you saw just the people who are in the kind of absolutely expensive seats, which of course, they love to show you with the American cameras and the FIFA cameras. It really is a sort of, it's a bizarre kind of talking shop where it's almost like an offshoot of one of those billionaire retreat conferences where they're all doing business together.

21:58And I find it really actually depressing that such a small number of people are going to own so many things in our world. So many of the sort of front facing things, the things that people enjoy. And for it to be, you know for bezos both cushioners yeah uh they they if you look at what they bought into in gaming and everything they're just sort of buying everything well sport is is also there's tremendous social capital in it you know never uh underestimate the fact the thing with billionaires is if you've got 300 billion dollars then you can spend 12 billion dollars like you might spend 25 quid on a night out right you could they they can just do it and what they get for this quite apart from actually it's an incredibly good financial deal is they get to hang out with celebrities courtside so the LA Lakers is like a real magnet for celebs right they get to sit next to Jack Nicholson and that's worth billions of dollars for them because they are all star fuckers you know they just are having billions puts you like absolutely level with like a minor actor you know that's it's or you know a comedian you've seen on mock the week you can go yeah you can just it it buys you into that world when i remember when we were selling endermal a number of times the multiples we were able to charge were much higher than from a normal business because people wanted to be involved in show business yeah and you could bring celebrities into meetings and people can meet them and they can talk about them at dinner parties sports is even more than that because if you get the chance to meet cristiano ronaldo yeah that is literally worth billions to you and so they'll spend billions on it the whole thing is a cartel of course it is the whole thing is absurd of course it is the whole thing makes such absolute sense for billionaires but the key is if you want to make a billion dollars in a year uh already have 200 billion and go and buy lester it's the best asset in entertainment i mean it's the most it's the least risky and most reliable because yeah even if they're losing it doesn't matter because you know there's again there's a reason why all part of the story yeah there's a reason why people don't buy cold play and that's because they know there could be 50 more cold plays coming along and so it's a riskier thing.

24:05And also Coldplay might just down tools. If you buy the LA Lakers, you've got your star players and they retire. You've got the draft, you buy someone new. If Coldplay, if they all go, that's it. That's the end of Coldplay. These sports things, they constantly regenerate like the Sugar Babes or like Trigger's Broom. The badge stays the same. Everything else changes. The money stays the same. The money through the turnstile stays the same. The franchise stays the same. It is, you couldn't come up with a better business. I do think the real positive of it is, I mean, it's fun to be, you know, there's some billionaires, we're billionaire.

24:39The real positive of it is it's a huge bet by people on human industry and real people and congregate. I mean, a huge bet by someone who has a massive stake in open AI, sure, but at least it is a huge bet on that. And there's lots and lots of people at the moment betting huge amounts of money on the fact that we're not all going to love AI and there's room for human creativity and human communion. And I think that's a positive. When we get on to China later, we'll have a slightly different take on that. But for now, it's a positive. That's not such a jury story. Yeah. And while everyone thinks about investing in Port Vale, shall we go to adverts?

25:16And then after that, we're talking about The Rock. Oh, so excited.

25:24this episode is brought to you by lloyd's rewards now a big mistake that people make is leaving the cinema as soon as the credits roll because there might be a bonus scene right at the end they're absolutely one of my favorite things in the middle yeah you never know in marvel's ones there's to be a mid-credit scene and then there'll be an end credit scene i remember the first one i really remember well two i remember ferris beulah's day off where where he tells you to go home at the end, but also Smokey and the Bandit with Burt Reynolds where they would do bloopers. It just feels like a secret little glimpse into a different world.

25:55And it doesn't quite have to be over. Yeah, exactly. And it's just a lovely little added bonus. You've done everything. You've made your show. You've given everyone everything. It's just a lovely little extra. Which is also the idea behind Lloyd's Rewards. Extra value appearing inside something you were already doing anyway, your daily banking. From shopping to streaming, you can bank on Lloyd's to help your money go further. It's rewards like this that make 14 million people bank on Lloyds. Search Lloyds Rewards in your app. Eligibility criteria, terms and conditions apply, retailer offers and cashback amounts may vary.

26:28UK residents 18 plus. The perfect lunch combo. That first bite of your favourite sub followed by ice cold Pepsi. Add a couple of friends and now that's next level. Suddenly the laughs get louder, the stories keep flowing and the food tastes better. because Pepsi brings out more flavor, more fun, and more of the moment. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a Pepsi Zero Sugar today. This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons Podcast. Have you guys heard about ChatGPT work? It's the new way to use ChatGPT for bigger multi-step projects. And when you need more than just answers, give ChatGPT work access to your apps and files, and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports.

27:19Get started at chatgpt.com by selecting work mode available on Plus and Pro plans.