Is the A.I. Arms Race Coming for Sports?

0:00The Varsity Podcast is presented by MLB. Major League Baseball is returning to Iowa this summer for MLB at Field of Dreams. Catch the Philadelphia Phillies and Minnesota Twins as they compete after a special pregame ceremony on Netflix, August 13th. Fans can find out more information at MLB.com slash Field of Dreams.

0:27Congratulations! You made the Varsity, the podcast. My name is John Aranda and I'm a sports correspondent in those of this pod. And today, Michael Nathanson returns to the varsity. Michael is a co-founder and senior managing director of the equity research publisher Moffitt Nathanson. And for my money, he's one of the smartest minds on the business of media. But before we get started, I actually have some news. Michaels Moffitt Nathanson and Puck are partnering for a second straight year on a sports business conference that we're going to hold this fall in New York City. In the Arena, that's the name of the conference.

1:04It's going to be held October 1st in New York. And we're going to have a lineup with top executives like Bella Bajaria, who, of course, is the chief content officer from Netflix. Matt Strauss, chairman of NBC Universal Media Group. NCAA president Charlie Baker. they're all going to speak. We're going to have a lot more top business executives to announce in the coming days, so reach out to me if you're interested or go to puck.news for all the relevant info. But before we get to Michael Nathanson, today is Wednesday, July 29th, and here's what I'm watching. I'm sorry, I really am, but I'm fascinated by the Savannah Bananas.

1:41This is a touring baseball team, scripted entertainment, that has been part of my consciousness for about four years now. I was blown away last year when the Bananas came to Camden Yards in Baltimore and sold out two consecutive shows, 45 ,000 fans a night. The games focus on entertainment and tap into local baseball fandom, the Camden Yards games. They had former Orioles like Adam Jones, Matt Wieters, Nick Marcakis. But it's the kind of shtick that I really thought would have run its course by now. But guess what? The Bananas were in Chicago over the weekend and sold out Wrigley Park for, count them, three consecutive nights.

2:18Incredible. Meanwhile, across town, the White Sox gave away Hawaiian shirts and played the Astros, and they still couldn't sell out their game on Saturday. Attendance was 30 ,000 in a 40 ,000-seat stadium. Again, just incredible. And per Paul Sullivan in the Chicago Tribune, Wrigley Field was filled with merchandising tents selling all sorts of banana paraphernalia. Baseball, dancing, karaoke, wrestling, comedy, magic. And as Sullivan wrote, everyone seemed to get their money's worth. Okay, now let's get to Michael Nathanson. Michael, first of all, great to see you again. I hyped this in the intro, but I am so excited about doing another event with you.

3:06Our event, we did an event covering the sports industry last year where we got people like Josh Harris, Adam Silver, Eric Shanks, Michael Rubin, Jerry Cardinal to come speak. We decided to run it through again October 1st in New York. Really excited to be doing this with you again. Yeah, John, I've got some great people to tell us, like, okay, who did we get this year? Who can we announce we have already, John? You have three big headliners that you've got for us. Well, Bella Bejeria from Netflix doesn't speak at a lot of events, but decided to come to speak with us. Same thing, Matt Strauss over at NBCUniversal runs the whole thing over there.

3:49And he doesn't appear at a lot of events. So getting him to come on board was great. I'm particularly excited. Charlie Baker at the NCAA is going to be there. So it's going to be a really good event. We're really excited to be partnering with you on it again. Oh, we're psyched, John. And we have more people to announce in the coming weeks, I believe. It's October 1st in New York. And last year was a great first attempt. It's just going to be even better. So we're psyched. Puck and Moffitt and Avington is going to be fun to do this. It really is. So all you people out there listening, sign up and get tickets.

4:24Reach out to us. We'll get you tickets. By the way, we have known each other now for about a quarter century. So the idea of actually working together on this stuff, you've come to my conferences, I've gone to your conferences. It's going to be a lot of fun. So let's go through a couple of the big topics that are certainly going to be sort of dominant themes at this conference that we're doing in October. Paramount. They put a pause on everything. it's looking like possibly 2027 as you look at what's happening with paramount's acquisition of warner brothers discovery what's the likelihood that this goes through in your mind okay and for disclaimer robert fishman now covers those names as part of you know mom hathanson's build out robert's robert's covermore media my working assumption is the deal will deal will close like i know there's you know going to be a court case but the reality is this is a court case about blockbuster films so i can tell you that with a few exceptions no one knows what a blockbuster is going to be until it's a blockbuster right so i can't believe that paramount lawyers kind of didn't do a better job of defending the idea that there's not a you know there's not a antitrust issue here but the antitrust issue is going to be about theatrical release most notably blockbuster blockbuster or something like it's I guess can't imagine that this is gonna be held up they will lose that case right but for the time being we have a pause right we will pause until the case is decided it surprised me that that's that's where we are you know both stocks have have fallen but my this is not Roberts for you but my view is this will get done Paramount needs it to get done they do Paramount on its own doesn't have scale and worse I don't think is prepared for a life as a public company again right they have their mindset like we're selling ourselves so we have a court case we'll see we'll see what happens but I think it's a very flimsy are you know argument that this is you know an antitrust issue on theatrical releases you know I guess Paramount's never except with a couple exceptions to Tom cruise movies paramount's not been a blockbuster business for a long long time they just they're not seen as a real credible global theatrical powerhouse way that disney is you know and universal are and warner's you know it's all those three studios really are dying you know dynamite blockbuster companies parents not the uh paramount came out and the pause is going into to 2027.

7:14I saw instant reaction suggesting that maybe something is going to happen before then. What's your timetable on this? Let's go with the court case, right? So it's going to be court case is going to start arguments. The question is, will the judge be able to get back to them by that date? Probably they will be. The fact that Paramount offered that as a suggestion is that they feel pretty confident that this court case will end sooner than probably that 2027 date right but it's all about you know the the wheels of the legal process how soon can they start how long is it how long is the court case and then you really got an answer look we've dealt with this I cover internet stocks so you know Google's been through this with antitrust of Apple it's just this is just what happens in this day and age right so take some time but I don't know exact timing because it's really about when the court case wraps up and when the judge issues an opinion.

8:12For this to go through, Michael, is your sense of paramount feels like they have the law on their side and they're just going to see it through? Or are they going to have to give something up? Well, they gave up in Europe, right? So in Europe, they had a JV with Universal called UIP. So they gave up this joint venture. They gave that up already. In America, there's not a joy adventure. I'm not sure how you... So we thought the issue was gonna be about cable networks, John. Like we thought the combination of Warner's and Paramount's cable networks would be so large that they would have to divest cable networks.

8:47That wasn't the issue, but I would have bet that was an issue that they could have solved easily by just selling some networks. I don't know how you resolve this issue right now because you can't really sell a stupid... They could sell a label, but really like, you know, DC and then the occasional Warner blockbuster and occasional Paramount blockbuster. It's not an easy solve here. You can't sell a studio. That would defeat the idea of what this deal is about. To me, what's going on here, too, is California will have a ton of job loss because of this. right so if i'm the attorney general i'm a california politician i don't want to see this merger happen i guess don't if i'm a guild i don't see any loss of all these jobs that paramount will say we're going to increase the output when we combine i personally don't believe that i think they will reduce their output but that's what they're saying i think people in la don't believe they're going to increase their output when they combine studios you know they're talking making 30 movies a year that seems impractical um but again i think that will have a law on their side I really do.

9:58I think they'll be able to prove why this, you know, the theatrical, you know, concentration is not that big of an issue. That's what my view is. Yeah, I've seen that whole idea about the, you know, the cable networks, you know, which, of course, you know, with Paramount, that's like VH1, you know, VH1 Classic. Yeah, exactly. MTV. A bunch of cable networks. I would imagine that Paramount would be more than happy to divest that, right? That's certainly not a growing business for Paramount, right? Totally. The actual is hard because you can't predict theatrical success. Right, John? Like, like the idea of like it's a blockbuster market share blockbusters.

10:37Yes. Chris Nolan delivers blockbusters. Marvel and Pixar blockbusters. You have DC. Well, some are blockbusters, some are not. Right. So I think it's really hard in general to say there's a blockbuster market here that we want to define. And they have too much share of that market. That seems kind of crazy. It really does. Maybe what they'll do is they'll say the third parties, they distribute, Warners is a good third-party distribution platform. Maybe I'll say Warners, you can't distribute Formula One going forward. You can't be a distributor of third-party movies. The other aspect of this that I find interesting is there is, we'll talk about the ESPN layoffs and NBC sort of spinning itself off.

11:24There is a, in traditional media, all these networks are going to they're going to pay through the nose for the NFL, of course. And we saw them do it for the NBA. But they're going to have to cut costs in certain areas. And people looked at, you know, when when Skydance took over Paramount and the first thing they did was, you know, to spend, you know, eight billion dollars or seven billion dollars on the UFC. It's like, OK, here's another big bidder coming. But once once this goes through, they're going to have to pair a lot of those sports rights. In terms of cutting costs and bringing over the Warner Brothers Discovery sports rights, they're going to have to make some really tough decisions on a couple of sports that are out there that they really do like.

12:09Right. And the gaining factor is going to be their debt, right, John? What's different is you'll have all this leverage combined with two companies. You have to manage through a higher and higher debt load, right? The companies that don't have that leverage, like the tech companies, Netflix, for example, they don't have to be as judicious about what things they sign. They have strong balance sheets, strong cash flow. Warners and parents together are going to have to make some tough decisions. I totally believe that. I really do. Yeah. And I think a lot of those decisions are like, not to hype them out, but the French Open that Warner Brothers Discovery loves.

12:48And, you know, you can take a look, and they love the Masters. They love the NFL. They love the NCAA tournament. And beyond that, like, you really have to prove that you can bring in advertising revenue and that your things that cable and satellite operators are going to want to pay in order to keep your channels on board, basically. Right. And college football, too. Well, they're called Big Ten. They had SEC. That was an awesome package. We'll see about Big Ten, John. I think they want to be in the Big Ten business, but we'll see. I guess I don't think they love the current Big Ten deal. I don't know.

13:32NBC doesn't love the current Big Ten deal. I know. SEC was a great deal. That was a great deal. That was a great deal. And now if you end up with a third pick in the Big Ten, sometimes you're going to end up with like Maryland versus Rutgers. You know, I mean, how many people are great ratings in my house for that game? Exactly. Outside of that. Yeah, the I-95 corridor from Newark down to Baltimore is going to be really hot and heavy. You know, John, it's funny. When Zasov lost the NBA, he and Luis went in and started buying rights. to offset the impact of losing the NBA. But you would probably argue the things they bought, they could be thrown overboard.

14:11Like that buying spree really didn't give them that much clout. I know they love the French Open. Who doesn't love the French Open? But you probably will see them in some of those deals they did right after the NBA and right before the deal, right? They had like those things probably not necessary going forward, you know? Well, you've been through these reports, Michael. But losing the NBA and all of a sudden, like this quarter, or not this quarter, the past quarter with the NBA Finals, their advertising business, it didn't crater, but it was down pretty significantly. And it's all due to the fact of losing the NBA.

14:53But I'll cut you off because I'm saying you'll see the second quarter where the NBA playoffs are out of Turner for the first time. Because they've always said to us, look, you really really impacts the NBA playoffs like the regular season at Turner okay it's nice to have but the playoffs were where the money came in like you saw NBC's numbers right they they had two good ad numbers I think the right model for all these guys is that big tentpole what NBC is trying to do with the Olympics and then World Cup on Telemundo but NBA I don't have a baseball but you know Saturday Night Football you basically need we talked of this in the past, John, to really event-ize sports.

15:31You know, when I just do two games, I'm watching the Orioles play. I'm sorry. That's not going to be an event for most people. So I think you really need to be in the event business, John. I really do. I'm not talking about darts either. You need to have the NFL, you know? And one aspect to the whole sports ecosystem that I find to be interesting is that, especially when David Levy was at running Turner Sports or Warner Brothers Discovery Sports. The NFL, everybody had this extra bidder that was very aggressive. I mean, they have the championship games in baseball. They had the AL and NLCS, or one of the two.

16:15Basketball, they went through the conference finals. They had one of the conference finals. Everybody, the NFL, they always had that one extra bidder that was out there that was dying to get the NFL. Well, now that they're with Paramount, like all of a sudden these leagues have lost that one extra bidder to bid it up, which explains why they're desperate in terms of trying to bring YouTube on or trying to get Apple to really get more involved, as well as Amazon and Netflix and all those other ones. Yeah. You know what's interesting about Amazon and Alphabet? I cover Alphabet. Mike Bornencar was Amazon.

16:51Alphabet just put up the first negative cash flow quarter maybe in our lifetime because of all the capex associated with AI. You know, I think you asked me in the past, like, what's YouTube strategy when it comes to rights? I think there's so much pressure at Alphabet to be more disciplined on cost. And because the AI capex is so large and the cost to run data centers is so large that basically they may be, again, more thoughtful. They're always thoughtful, but maybe a bit more conservative about what they want to pay for at YouTube because times are a little bit tougher on cash flow, right? And they even issued equity in the last quarter to raise money to pay their CapEx bill.

17:33So I don't really think, and Amazon also has major CapEx to pay for. So I think one of the things to watch, John, is maybe these, what I hope would be kind of the guy at the bar showing up last minute with a big check to pay for everyone's drinks, that may not be happening. It may not be happening because of AI and the need for these companies to really, to find cost synergies to other places to pay for the massive investment in data centers. So I'm watching that. I know we were surprised that Alphabet, that YouTube didn't get, you know, keep their NFL right this round. You know, they lost that opening game.

18:09Maybe that was just them being a little bit more disciplined because they have to be. I don't know. You know, it surprised me too that they didn't keep it. You know, I'm increasingly hearing that, especially when it comes to Alphabet slash Google. What is their AI CapEx bill right now? Next year is going to be, this year is going to be over$200 billion. $200 billion. Over$200 billion. And then next year... Just for the viewers, Michael, that's billion with a B that you're talking about. Yeah,$195 to$205 billion. They're not going to have enough cash. They have to borrow or issue equity because they actually had negative free cash after they paid for their computer expenses, you know, for their data centers.

19:00But, John, next year they said significant increase in CapEx. So this year is$195 to$205 billion. Significant can be almost, we don't know, they haven't given us a guide yet, but call it 250 billion of capex versus like 60 to 70 billion five six years ago so it's a massive ramp up this week you'll have amazon you'll have medical might we have all the other companies apple is the one that has sat out this build now they have cash to spend but again they have been asking for something that no one wants to deliver which is we want to buy all rights you know all the markets of perpetuity or like you know for the time being i don't think they will get some these rights the way they want to get them they'll have to give us something up at apple that the a couple of things on that one is that in order and especially with the nfl that the the history has been that if you want to get in on the you you're going to have to overpay because the nfl has these established companies that they're that they trust and they know and they like and uh all of a sudden will alphabet be willing to get in and lose money on a on on a on video when it has that kind of payout coming for for ai uh increasingly it looks like no yeah youtube just grew 13 of the quarter and ads i mean they don't need to do this they have a creator business that's working pretty well yeah so they're more interested in subscriptions now than they are probably in buying rights, you know, selling subscriptions.

20:35So we'll watch that. Yeah. They've moved down my list of next bidders up. I'll tell you that much. They really have because of AI.

20:48Hey, it's Jen Hatmaker. Here's what I've learned in midlife. Joy isn't the reward you earn after all the work is done. Joy is the work. That's what this new series on For the Love is all about. The sacred yes. It's choosing delight, rest, and pleasure on purpose. Because saying yes to yourself, that's the thing that finally lets you fill your table with everybody else. Come find your sacred yes with me. Follow and listen to For the Love wherever you get your podcasts. And then I find Apple to be totally fascinating. They have the money. On the entertainment side, people take them very seriously.

21:29They have some of the best, highest quality shows in entertainment. They get some of the biggest stars and they spend a lot of money on it. They're sort of the HBO of streaming is how a lot of people view them. With sports, especially coming off this MLS deal, I think a lot of people are waiting and looking at how Formula One does with them because MLS has scared a lot of sports that don't want to go and become invisible um and uh and that's part of the problem that happened with the mls deal which you know now they're trying to get in front of the the paywall and they they ended up uh shortening the length of the deal and they're trying to get out a little bit earlier and so yeah apple is uh there's going to be some there's going to be somebody that's going to go all in with apple again i just don't know who that's going to be yeah it's funny because even though they have some great shows.

22:22I was going to give everyone a shout out to watch Widow's Bay. If you haven't seen it, it's great. But their viewership share of streaming is still like 2%, right? So, you know, Apple could afford to lose money, waste money, but they really never scaled streaming. They never have. And you wonder, like, what are they going to do when they grow up? Because they've missed, they've no interest in buying other people's assets. You know, they've not bought Warners when they could have bought Warners or Paramount. So I don't know what they're going to do, John. like they're just in there this tiny little micro share of the market you know they were early apple tv so they had these devices and they kind of priced them way too high roku took a ton of share and you don't know what they want to do when they grow up when it comes to streaming i just don't get it i really don't you know they're they're not an ads business they're not a great they're not a great ad platform right so it's kind of weird it really is do you see any of these again as being interested in in any of these uh traditional media companies like if fox all of a sudden decides it it wants to go up for sale or or you know nbc is now uh spun away from comcast which presumably you know makes that that potentially up for sale as well i think um what i've seen we've seen is you know netflix try to buy warner's looking at that stock price um they got clobbered for it But I would think for IP, not everyone's got IP, right?

23:51So Fox has their own IP, more news and sports. But if people want to buy those sports rights, just go buy them from the sports leagues themselves, right? So I don't really think, again, because of the push to move to AI, I don't see Amazon or Alphabet buying. Meta's doing their own AI as well. Apple why would Apple they had a chance to buy Warners they've never showed up at an auction why are they gonna do this so that leaves you um one more I don't Microsoft is nowhere Apple I I just don't see it John I don't see I don't think they have to do this right it's like maybe we all fantasize about it because it'd be great for the industry to have a new sugar daddy show up and start buying rights or buying companies I just don't see it you know this AI push is such a big ship from where they were three or four years old, all these companies, that is where the next battle is being fought.

24:46It's really being fought about, you know, models and data centers and all that, the ability to develop AI. Investment in content is nice in sports, but that's not what we're worrying about on Wall Street right now. This is totally fascinating to me because it's what I've been hearing. I haven't done anything really on this yet, but the idea that, you know, we're seeing the sports strategies from all these streamers. And Netflix right now, they like big events. The idea of Netflix coming in and wanting to get like the Sunday afternoon, one of the Sunday afternoon NFL telecasts. Yeah, the AFC package.

25:28Jacksonville versus who? Versus Cleveland Browns. They're not doing that. How are you going to eventize that, Michael, for goodness sakes? Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. No, John, it's a really good point. I can see Netflix trying to get the Sunday night game because you always have top two or three teams. You have a great schedule on Sunday nights, but we'll see what Bella tells us at our conference in October. But I think my point that I'm trying to make is that they are going to reach in. they all have their ad tiers they all they all like sports uh they they they've all been kicking the tires on on sports but sports just came out of a of a cable system where you know you had rsn's you referenced the orioles rsn's doing 162 orioles games you know and they'll be on his wallpaper in my house of sorts there's not one streamer that's going to be interested in and doing that along the same lines as, you know, regional sports networks.

26:38You know, perhaps they'll do the package to where, you know, you can stream them here and there. But it just seems like there's been a really slow moving turn that you referenced with regards to the AI spend for, you know, not just Google, but like all these people have a lot of spends, big spends that are out there. and the sort of panacea that sports saw in a declining linear TV system of, oh, well, we'll just take it and go to streaming. There's now a lot of question marks about whether that's going to happen or not. If I could share some data with you and your audience. For the longest time, John, let's call it 2005 to 2019.

27:25Consumer spending on all things video. video could be pay TV film tickets home video streaming but from 2005 2019 spending in the US went up by 3 % a year so consumers found 3 % every year to spend on video and part of that 3 % growth was basically the continued inflation of the cable bundle okay in 2019 2020 consumer spending flatline now the past five years consumer spending on all things video has been flat right so the consumers have voted with their wallet they're not interested in paying three percent a year or more they're being a lot more diligent and conservative about where they're going to spend their money they're trading in and out of bundles they're churning more they're really thoughtful so the idea of like everyone's going to go in and pay for sports rights because we'll be able to pass on the consumer well that ended in 2019 2020 just has right so i think everyone's realized what we can't assume that because we're paying more for rights we can just pass it on to our consumer especially when you go streaming streaming is a one-to-one relationship right where i can churn easily every single month the old cable model you know i view i could have 100 channels that we would watch we care about so churn was much lower so i just think we're in a different economic period consumers are also empowered.

28:49There's all this free content, YouTube, Roku channel, TikTok, Instagram reels, that basically suffice is, you know, sufficing us. So that's, that's correct word. Maybe not suffice. It's, it will suffice. Thank you. So the reality is you don't need to, I don't know, is that the right use? You're the writer. I'm just the, you know what? That's why I have my editors. We'll, we'll, we'll go to that. We'll suffice it out of here. It suffice to say, but basically the reality is that sort of about five years ago, consumers have woken up to what they're willing to pay for. I think the owners of these properties have started to become a little bit more thoughtful about what they can pay for, what they can't pay for.

29:31And five years ago, that flatline coincided with the rise of TikTok, the rise of YouTube, for goodness sakes, YouTube trying to get into the sports rights business and, you know, they have a lot of free content there as well. Is it all these social media apps that have caused the spend to flatline? I think it is. I think it's just also streaming came out so inexpensively versus the bundle that, you know, this is my whole thing. What we've taken, this is our Mophie Nathanson pitch about how these guys cheated the ecosystem, right? So they basically created when they launched their peacocks and their power plus is such a cheap cheap tier that you say so why am I paying a hundred bucks when I can get like you know three things for four bucks five bucks each so they've we've all become smarter about the cost of what we could bundle ourselves right our own bundles plus free entertainment the law free entertainment out there why I need to five streaming services when and get free stuff like Roku channel.

30:40By the way, Michael and I, I think one of the reasons that we like each other is that we were the, I think we might've been the last two people to say like Fox and ESPN keeping their programming exclusive to the bundle, in the bundle, because that business was so good for them. And you had Peacock, owned by Comcast, just giving it away and uh and uh you know the nfl games that uh from uh cbs going out on paramount plus and like you said people would be like why am i spending you know a hundred dollars i don't know what tier you have but it's a lot more than a hundred dollars to uh subscribe to xfinity and it's uh uh you know you could see this you could see this happening yeah i would love to ask brian Roberts over drinks like walk me through what you were thinking along the way right like NBC and Comcast and the most incentive to keep the video bundle going like Comcast was the biggest cable distributor NBC top two three asset and just basically it's all unraveled you know on strategy the strategies help things you and I have you know have a long history of covering the cable business and we just got through with the earning season with charter with comcast and the rate of losses is slowing but the rate of losses still takes my breath away i mean they're they're losing like tens of thousands of subscribers each quarter even more than that uh each quarter yeah what where do you stand right now in terms of of charter comcast and the gate in the cable bundle This is a newfangled way of asking the question I ask every time you come on, which is, what's the floor?

32:28Oh, the floor. But it's interesting, Charter and Comcast have undertaken two different strategies, right? So Charter has a strategy where you get all these streaming packages bundled in to your basic Essential Plus, right? And I think that makes sense, right? So if I'm paying for the bundle, I should get Power on Plus for free and Fox One for free. I should get that with me. And their cord cutting has really slowed. This quarter wasn't awesome, but they pretty much almost got back to zero because of cord cutting change at Charter. Like negative 10 to zero was pretty amazing. Comcast has not followed that strategy.

33:06And I don't know why they've not followed that strategy to basically create a super bundle of all these apps into one. Their decline rate's pretty high. But what's going to be interesting is Comcast is going to become two companies. and you wonder when Comcast becomes a cable only company and NBC's in a content only company will strategies at Comcast look more like charter your can they wake up and say okay let's stop the video bleeding let's start making better bundles let's make smaller bundles and we've been waiting John as far as you know I talk to each other just lighter and lighter bundles right I want I want a sports and news bundle YouTube's offering that it's still too high it's like 70 dollars versus the 85 bundle for youtube tv but i have to believe that when comcast is on its own they'll probably look more like charter i wonder what craig will say because he covers comcast but charter has done a better job of holding on to video subs recently than comcast right now craig would put through the idea of they're all going to merge anyway but he says they're not going to emerge but i think at some point in their new administration you You got to merge all these guys into one.

34:16There's not a lot of synergy. We need one cable company, basically, nationally. If I'm going to make a bear case about Charter that I've heard, it's like, yeah, they've stopped. They've slowed the rate of decline better than the other MVPDs, multi-channel video providers. But their revenue is really lagging. You know, in your mind, this strategy that they have to make these big bundles that include all of the streamers, it still does work, even if the revenue lags its brethren? Well, the stock price tells you it's not working, right? If you want to depress the Muffin-Avinson folks, let's put up the stock chart of Charter the past five years.