Netflix Climbs the Top Rope

Plus: Main Street has been Mean Streets for bitcoin. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

January 24, 2024

SPONSORED BY 10 EAST

Good morning. Sorry is the hardest word. It's even harder on TikTok.  Case in point: Kyte Baby, the maker of popular all-organic baby's clothes. The brand found itself in a TikTok pillory after denying an employee's request to work remotely while her newborn was in the NICU, leading her to quit. The employee's story went viral after her sister posted a TikTok about it, prompting Kyte Baby CEO Ying Liu to post an apology TikTok of her own. When commenters derided her post as insincere, Liu posted another apology video apologizing for her first apology, in which she admitted the first apology was, in fact, insincere. We're still evaluating and will let you know our official position on the apology soon.

MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT 'WWE Raw' Is Heading to Netflix in 2025 Photo by Miguel Discart via CC BY-SA 2.0 Netflix's ring entrance was nothing if not dramatic.  The streaming giant struck a 10-year, $5 billion-plus deal for exclusive US and international streaming rights of World Wrestling Entertainment's flagship program, Raw, marking a big step into livestreaming sports. The Squared Circle Professional wrestling's OG has had its fair share of dark days, nearly hitting rock-bottom both creatively and financially — not to mention the controversies surrounding founder Vince McMahon. But the WWE is more popular than ever, with WrestleMania 39 generating a live gate of more than $21.6 million last year, 27% more than the previous record. That made for a smooth transition as the company merged with mixed martial arts promotion UFC to form a parent umbrella company, TKO Group Holdings. Raw is shown on NBCUniversal's USA Network, where it averages more than 2 million viewers per episode. That contract was valued at about $1.3 billion; the Netflix deal is worth roughly four times as much. Netflix, which blew past analysts' estimates by adding 13.1 million subscribers in its most recent quarter, is the king of streamers and the only profitable platform among the big names. However, it has been late to the live sports push. With Raw set to enter its catalog in January 2025, Netflix will be taking its first step livestreaming established sports entertainment:  Amazon is the exclusive broadcaster of the NFL's Thursday Night Football, and last year, Apple TV inked a decade-long deal with Major League Soccer. In contrast, Netflix has focused more on sports documentary series and in-house live events like the Netflix Cup, which paired pro golfers with Formula 1 racers for an 18-hole tournament.  The deal will not only give Netflix rights to Raw, but also international rights to the WWE's Smackdown, NXT, and premium events like SummerSlam and Royal Rumble, the streamer and TKO said Tuesday. The Rock Says: In other WWE money news, former wrestler Dwayne Johnson is joining TKO's board of directors. He's set to receive $30 million in stock awards, and obtained full ownership over the trademarked name "The Rock" as part of a new licensing and royalties agreement. Not a bad payday for the highest-paid actor ever.  Written by Griffin Kelly

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BLOCKCHAIN Bitcoin Slumps After ETF Rollout The debut of the much-anticipated Bitcoin ETFs isn't exactly sending the cryptocurrency to the moon. Instead of "HODL'ing" — that's message-board speak for "hold on for dear life," or refusing to ever sell — many bitcoin owners are using the opportunity to offload the digital currency, sending its price plummeting and spoiling the launches of various ETFs from major financial institutions. Hold on to Your Bits The so-called spot-bitcoin ETFs — which essentially allow an investor to trade bitcoin as easily as stocks or mutual funds — have long been heralded by crypto proponents as proof of the currency's mainstream legitimacy. And when the SEC finally approved the ETFs earlier this month, nearly a dozen asset managers including BlackRock, Fidelity, and ARK stood ready to launch their own funds. But the fun fizzled quickly, retroactively making last year's bitcoin rally of roughly 160% look less like a sign of what's to come and more like a big buildup ahead of a selloff: The price of bitcoin has receded roughly 16% since the funds launched on January 11, falling under $40,000 for the first time since early December (bitcoin mania initially sent the price to nearly $70,000 in November 2021). Inflows into the ETFs, meanwhile, have totaled roughly $4.7 billion by the end of Tuesday, according to crypto investment group CoinShares, slightly lower than what some analysts had expected. The Gray Zone: This being crypto, there's already a leading theory as to why the ETFs failed to pop. Since 2017, Grayscale, a crypto-focused asset manager, has been operating its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, which allows users to swap bitcoin for shares in the trust, which roughly tracks with the price of the digital currency itself. Grayscale led the lobbying charge to legalize spot-bitcoin ETFs, and moved the trust, which held roughly $28 billion in assets, into an ETF following the SEC's approval earlier this month. But investors seized the opportunity to finally cash out, with some simply taking their money over to new rival ETFs that offered far lower exchange fees. Grayscale just slashed its fee to 1.5% from 2%, but Blackrock and Fidelity launched their ETFs with zero-fee promotions. In roughly two weeks, $3.7 billion has left Grayscale's fund. That's less HODL and more HTI – here, take it! Written by Brian Boyle

CONSUMER Temu Is Leaning on Boomers to Storm the US Can you guess the second-fastest-growing website in America after ChatGPT? If so, you're probably a Boomer.  E-commerce platform Temu only landed in the US in September 2022, but it quickly established itself as a rival to fellow Chinese e-commerce giant Shein. Temu appears to be growing at a phenomenal rate, and analysis provided to Bloomberg by research firm Attain found that the engine behind that growth is loyal Baby Boomer shoppers.  Boom Goes the Dynamite  Web analytics firm SimilarWeb told Business Insider that Temu's website was the second-fastest growing website in the US, beaten only by OpenAI. Sometimes our assumptions about who the typical internet user is can be completely topsy-turvy. On Tuesday, we noted the surprising news that Generation Z may actually prefer in-person shopping to ordering a ton of clothes and knick-knacks off the internet, now it turns out Boomers are a big part of Temu's newfound success:  Temu's Boomer customers placed an average 5.6 orders from the site over the course of 2023, according to Attain. Shoppers in the next-oldest cohort, Generation X, placed 4.5, while zoomers (those born from the mid-'90s to early '10s) clocked in at 2.6 purchases. Attain's CEO Brian Mandelbaum put Temu's popularity with Boomers down to its range of products — anyone who's had Temu target them with ads will know the startlingly disparate (and startlingly cheap) items it has for sale. Marketing Mayhem: Another explanation for Temu's rapid growth could be the incredible firepower loaded into its marketing campaigns. Not only has Temu peppered social media with ads, it also snagged an ad spot at last year's Super Bowl, and plans to do the same this year, per a Wall Street Journal report. E-commerce analyst Andrew Lipsman told Modern Retail he'd "never seen a strategy quite like this," adding, "I've seen versions of it, but not seemingly at the scale, at this level of aggressiveness." Shein might want to boost its own aggression levels.   Written by Isobel Asher Hamilton

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