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WWE star Rhonda Rousey tipped to leave WWE soon; May return to UFC - July 2023
“This was always, always, always the plan. What screwed it up, and admittedly, and everyone will admit this, as far as it was screwed up – when I was telling everyone a long time ago, hey, Ronda and Shayna are gonna win the tag team titles, it kept getting delayed and then Ronda got hurt.
“The thing was, and I don’t know the date, it might be SummerSlam, it might be a little bit after. The deal is that Ronda has a hard out. She gave a date, ‘This is my last date’.
“Because I remember talking to somebody there and it’s like, well, I know they’re gonna do this, make the big match for WrestleMania, and it’s like, ‘No, her hard out is long before WrestleMania’.
“The point is that, whatever it is that they’re planning to do… they wanna do a feud. The whole tag team was to set up Ronda and Shayna doing a feud. Ronda wanted to do this feud with Shayna, she got what she wanted. She’s always wanted to do it because Shayna’s the one that got her basically into pro-wrestling.
“Shayna developed Ronda’s love for professional wrestling, so to her pay her back, they’re gonna do a program. I don’t know if it’s one match, I don’t know if it’s two or three, but based on whenever that out is, they had to get it done now.
“This was the latest they could go. They wanted a long title reign to build it up and to do the whole thing where you can see the (turn) coming, the little teases and everything – they didn’t have time.” - Dave Meltzer, Wrestling Observer
Boxing News: Jake Paul speaks on PPVs
Boxing: "Piracy is rampant, competition for eyeballs non-stop. "Doing a million buys today is like doing two million buys 10 years ago." "current PPV movers no matter the opponent" are Tyson Fury, Canelo Alvarez and self. One of boxing's top 3 PPV attractions; Believes that he is one of the top attractions with Tyson Fury & Canelo Alvarez. "Selling PPV is really hard". "Less than 10 fighters in the world can truly move six figures on their own consistently: Jake Paul
Wagering, TV bodies slam proposed gambling ads ban; AFL wary of impact - June 28th, 2023
Some of Australia’s biggest bookmakers have decried a potential ban on gambling advertisements as an ineffective and short-sighted way to remediate gambling harm, after a parliamentary inquiry report recommended the Albanese government commit to a comprehensive ban across all sectors within the next three years.
Responsible Wagering Australia (RWA) is the body that represents gambling giants including Sportsbet, PointsBet and Ladbrokes. It said the proposal, one of 31 recommendations raised by the House of Representatives standing committee on social policy and legal affairs, was a step too far and jeopardised the future of sporting codes and local broadcasters.
“Other more measured options which could be considered by the government include capping the numbers of gambling ads to be shown,” RWA chief Kai Cantwell said on Wednesday.
“By doing this, the expectations of the community to see less advertising would be met, while also maintaining the crucial support to sporting codes and local broadcasters.”
Tabcorp, which is not a member of RWA, welcomed the proposal after previously joining advocates in supporting a total ban on gambling broadcast advertising.
Tabcorp chief Adam Rytenskild said the report’s release marked an important moment for the sustainability of the wagering industry, reiterating a point from the inquiry’s hearing that the proliferation of gambling advertising is excessive.
“Tabcorp welcomes the committee’s recommendation for a nationally consistent regulatory framework. All wagering operators should have to adhere to the same regulations.”
Tabcorp’s stance is motivated by a keenness to protect its market share, according to rivals, and Rytenskild’s comments offer a stark contrast to RWA chief Cantwell who said the recommendations fail to consider the evidence from the committee hearings earlier this year.
“RWA recognises community concerns around online wagering advertising and there are more effective ways of meeting community expectations,” Cantwell said.
RWA and Free TV Australia, which has acted on behalf of Seven, Ten and Nine (the owner of this masthead), have argued for frequency caps on the number of ads shown across different channels, rather than a blanket ban.
Cantwell said by capping the number of ads, the community’s expectations to see less advertising would be met, while maintaining the support to sporting codes and local broadcasters.
He added a blanket ban through a phased roll-out was “short-sighted, ineffective and not the answer”, and could lead to more Australians turning to illegal offshore markets.
The AFL’s chief financial officer and general manager of broadcasting and clubs, Travis Auld, said on Wednesday it was too early for the league to have a response, and it had been consulting with the federal government about changes that could work.
“Any changes we make and the consequences of those changes need to be well thought through and well understood. There are some significant decisions within there that have impacts potentially on our industry,” Auld said.
He said that money from wagering firms was part of the AFL’s infrastructure, helping the competition keep its prices low, as well as invest in the game at a grassroots level. The AFL has an $8 million a year deal with Sportsbet.
“Of course money is part of it. It’s what allows us to keep our prices where we are, it’s what allows us to invest in boys and girls playing football at this level,” said Auld.
Despite a record $4.5 billion broadcast agreement signed with Seven Network and Foxtel in 2022, Auld said the AFL and both of its partners would represent themselves independently in any conversations around potential financial impacts.
“The commerciality from their point of view will remain known to them. I think we’ve been clear on the impacts on us.”
Free TV Australia’s CEO, Bridget Fair, warned a “kneejerk move” to implement an outright ban “will ultimately hurt viewers and the television services they love”.
“Many of the sports broadcasting deals have been agreed to beyond the three-year phase-out
period for advertising,” Fair said.
An NRL spokesperson said it recognised the significant stakeholder and community interest in gambling, saying it is committed to ensuring the NRL’s approach reflects this interest, “while also encouraging a holistic, evidence-based approach to mitigate the risks of gambling harm more broadly”.
A report earlier this year from the Australian Gambling Research Centre found most Australians (64 per cent) believe governments should play the biggest role in how wagering is advertised.
Dr Kei Sakata, the research centre’s acting executive manager, welcomed the report’s recommendations, saying it is a crucial step in reducing gambling harm.
Sakata also welcomed the committee’s recommendations of a national classifications scheme and effective warning labels for simulated gambling games and loot boxes, as well ongoing funding for gambling research.
(The Sydney Morning Herald)
WWE Money in The Bank breaks records - 2023
WWE Money in the Bank 2023 set a huge company record, as did this week’s edition of Friday Night SmackDown.
Both the June 30 SmackDown episode and the July 1 WWE premium live event emanated from the O2 Arena in London, England.
Both shows were eventful, with passionate UK fans filling the arena on both nights.
During the post-show press conference, Triple H revealed that Money in the Bank 2023 was the highest-grossing arena show in WWE history.
Triple H didn’t specify how much WWE brought in, but this would mean that the show earned more than any other WWE event to take place in an indoor arena.
The Chief Content Officer also revealed that the previous night’s edition of SmackDown was the highest-grossing SmackDown in WWE history.
He did state that over 37,000 fans were in attendance at the O2 Arena across both nights, noting that WWE is proud of the success of SmackDown and Money in the Bank.
As far as attendance figures go, WrestleTix previously reported that 17,617 tickets had been distributed for the sold out Money in the Bank event.
The premium live event was certainly eventful, with Jey Uso pinning Roman Reigns in the Usos vs Reigns & Solo Sikoa Bloodline Civil War.
This marked Reigns’ first pinfall loss since December 2019.
Reading restrictions imposed on Twitter users - July 2, 2023
Elon Musk has imposed temporary reading restrictions for Twitter users, announcing paying customers will be allowed to see more tweets than unverified accounts.
Mr Musk says extreme levels of data scraping has prompted the social media company to limit users to reading 6,000 posts per day.
Accounts without a blue tick will be restricted to 600 posts per day.
New accounts yet to be verified will be capped at 300 tweets.
Several US Agencies Set Up New Crypto Task Force in Arizona to Combat Illegal Online Activity - June 2023
Federal agencies have joined forces to combat crimes involving cryptocurrencies in Arizona after seeing an increase in digital transactions related to narcotics, firearms, and other illicit activity.
On June 15, Homeland Security Investigations in Arizona and representatives from four other federal agencies signed a memorandum of understanding to establish the “Darknet Marketplace and Digital Currency Crimes Task Force,” according to a June 20 press release by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The other agencies who signed the agreement are the IRS, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and the U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona.
Over the past several years, federal agencies have seen an increase in the use of the internet to facilitate illegal transactions involving narcotics, personal information, firearms, and other contraband, the report said, adding that the use of digital currency to facilitate these transactions has also risen.
The task force aims to “disrupt and dismantle criminal organizations that exploit the appearance of anonymity on the darknet or use digital currency to facilitate criminal activities, such as drug trafficking, money laundering, theft of personal information, and child exploitation.”
The new task force is expected to serve the needs of Arizona.
Darknets are internet-based networks that require special software and authorization to access. They’re designed to provide anonymity, making them a haven for criminal activity.
Illicit Crypto Activity
According to a February 2023 report by forensic cryptocurrency firm Chainalysis (pdf), the illicit transaction volume in the cryptocurrency market rose to $20.6 billion in 2022 from $18.1 billion in 2021 and $8.4 billion in 2020.
The share of illicit activity in the overall cryptocurrency activity stood at 0.24 percent. Although this is the second-lowest number in six years, it is up from 0.12 percent in 2021.
Darknet markets and fraud shops made an estimated $1.5 billion in 2022, down from $3.1 billion in 2021, the report said. The reason for the drop is attributed to the shutdown of Hydra Market, a leading darknet marketplace.
“Hydra’s closure prompted a sector-wide decline in darknet market revenues, with average daily revenue for all markets falling from $4.2 million just prior to its closure and to $447,000 immediately after. While drug markets’ collective revenue hasn’t recovered fully, it climbed slowly back toward previous levels in the second half of 2022. Fraud shops, however, have continued to decline,” the report said.
When it comes to scams, U.S. victims of cryptocurrency scams lost five times more money in 2022 compared to other types of internet crimes, according to a June 6 study by cybersecurity company Surfshark.
Each American victim is estimated to have lost an average of $86,000 per year due to cryptocurrency scams compared to the average loss of $16,000 per year in scams involving traditional payment methods.
In total, over $2.3 billion worth of cryptocurrencies are calculated to have been lost to internet crimes across the United States last year.
Crypto Use by Sanctioned Entities
The Chainalysis report also pointed out that 43 percent of 2022’s illicit transaction volume came from activity associated with sanctioned entities. It gave the example of cryptocurrency exchange Garantex, which accounted for the majority of the sanctions-related transaction volume last year.
The U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Garantex in April 2022, but “as a Russia-based business, the exchange has been able to continue operating with impunity,” the report said.
“Transactions associated with Garantex or any other sanctioned crypto service represent, at the very least, substantial compliance risk for businesses that are subject to U.S. jurisdiction, including fines and potential criminal charges.”
America’s rivals like China and North Korea also use cryptocurrency for illicit activities. A June 11 report from The Wall Street Journal claimed that North Korea stole more than $3 billion in cryptocurrency and used it to fund about half of its ballistic missile program.
A May 23 report by Elliptic highlighted China’s use of cryptocurrencies in its fentanyl trafficking operations.
“Elliptic’s blockchain analysis shows that the cryptocurrency wallets used by these [Chinese fentanyl precursor] companies have received thousands of payments, totaling just over $27 million, and that the number of transactions has increased by 450 percent year-on-year,” the study said.
“$27 million would purchase enough precursor to produce fentanyl pills with a street value of approximately $54 billion,” it said.
What's going on at Twitter? Elon Musk's latest controversial decision is 'read limits' - 3rd July 2023
As Twitter imposes limits on the number of tweets users can view, we look back at Elon Musk's tumultuous and confusing ownership of the social media platform.
KEY POINTS
Twitter has limited the number of tweets an unverified user can read to 1,000 a day.
The decision has been taken to reportedly limit data scraping.
Owner Elon Musk has cut the company's value by more than half since October.
Twitter owner Elon Musk has introduced a limit on how many tweets users can view, meaning verified accounts will have a 'read limit' of 10,000 posts a day and unverified accounts can only read 1,000 posts a day.
Twitter's decision was made to discourage "extreme levels" of data scraping and system manipulation by actors, including AI companies, Mr Musk wrote on the platform.
It's the latest eyebrow-raising move at the company since the billionaire bought the company for US$44 billion ($66 billion) and took over in October last year, with many wondering what his strategy is.
Here's a look back at the confusing and controversial decisions at the company, which even Mr Musk admits is now worth far less than what he bought it for - he reportedly sent a memo to staff suggesting it was worth US$20 billion ($30 billion).
Why did Elon Musk fire so much of Twitter's workforce?
One of Mr Musk's first decisions at the company was to sack thousands of workers globally, allegedly to reduce costs.
He has since said around 80 per cent of staff have gone from the company, meaning its books now have around 1,500 staff, compared to over 8,000 before his takeover.
The purge included former chief executive Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal and other executives, and also led to mass sackings of curators and moderators which has had knock-on effects to the product's algorithm and advertisers abandoning it.
Twitter's Australia operation lost most of its workers.
Linda Yaccarino was appointed to take over the reins in May.
Many at the company were hoping the former ad executive would help bring back advertisers who had abandoned the platform since the Musk takeover.
What happened when Twitter introduced verified accounts?
Twitter began charging $12 a month for the iconic blue tick in a 'Twitter Blue' subscription, again under the banner of eliminating data scraping and managing bots.
The tick was once known as a symbol to verify one's identity and granted to high-profile figures such as celebrities, politicians and journalists for free, but those who declined to pay for the new subscription have since lost their ticks.
Mr Musk said that those who have a Twitter Blue subscription are being prioritised in the algorithm.
Twitter Blue users also get access to posting longer videos, the ability to edit tweets and an ad-free experience.
Is Twitter allowing hate speech to go unchecked?
Australia's eSafety Commission has issued Twitter a warning and threat of hefty fines if it does not deal with a surge of online hate.
Mr Musk allowed 62,000 banned or suspended users to be reinstated to the platform, many of which had been banned for hate speech.
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said in June there have been more complaints about online hate on Twitter in the past year than any other platform, and complaints have spiked since October.
Ms Inman Grant said Twitter's policies prohibited hateful conduct on the platform but rising complaints to eSafety and reports of the toxic content remaining on the platform show that Twitter was probably not enforcing its own rules.
"We are also aware of reports that the reinstatement of some of these previously banned accounts has emboldened extreme polarisers, peddlers of outrage and hate, including neo-Nazis both in Australia and overseas," Ms Inman Grant said.
US advocacy group GLAAD has designated Twitter as the most hateful platform towards the LGBTQ+ community.
Research by the UK-based Centre for Countering Digital Hate demonstrated that slurs against African Americans showed up on Twitter an average of 1,282 times a day before Mr Musk took over the platform. Afterwards, they more than doubled to an average of 3,876 times a day.
Reversing ban on COVID-19 misinformation
Similarly, Twitter's terms and conditions were changed to reverse a ban on posting misinformation related to COVID-19.
"Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy," the terms said.
Public health officials condemned the decision and said it could lead to more false claims about the virus or the safety and effectiveness of vaccines.
With additional reporting by AAP.
Media Man Wrestling Blog: Pop Culture News
Media Man Wrestling Blog
'Indiana Jones' tops North American box office with $60M
Movie Box Office: 'Indiana Jones' tops North American box office with $60m. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is the No. 1 movie in North America, with $60m in receipts this weekend, Box Office Mojo announced Sun. It's Harrison Ford's fifth and final time as the famed archeologist. No. 2 is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse with $11.5m, followed by Elemental at No. 3 with $11.3m, No Hard Feelings at No. 4 with $7.5m and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts at No. 5 with $7m. Then its Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken at No. 6 with $5.2m, The Little Mermaid at No. 7 with $5.2m, The Flash at No. 8 with $5m, Asteroid City at No. 9 with $3.8m and Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3 at No. 10 with $1.8m. It's fair to stay its a pretty flat month for box office compared to the past 5 year to decade period. Of course streaming by the likes of Netflix and HBO is all the rage these days and consumers are on stronger budgets than ever. Take this into consideration with numbers before we go down the sometimes "woke" aspects of film and how many audiences turned away from a once booming industry
WWE star Rhonda Rousey tipped to leave WWE soon; May return to UFC - July 2023
“This was always, always, always the plan. What screwed it up, and admittedly, and everyone will admit this, as far as it was screwed up – when I was telling everyone a long time ago, hey, Ronda and Shayna are gonna win the tag team titles, it kept getting delayed and then Ronda got hurt.
“The thing was, and I don’t know the date, it might be SummerSlam, it might be a little bit after. The deal is that Ronda has a hard out. She gave a date, ‘This is my last date’.
“Because I remember talking to somebody there and it’s like, well, I know they’re gonna do this, make the big match for WrestleMania, and it’s like, ‘No, her hard out is long before WrestleMania’.
“The point is that, whatever it is that they’re planning to do… they wanna do a feud. The whole tag team was to set up Ronda and Shayna doing a feud. Ronda wanted to do this feud with Shayna, she got what she wanted. She’s always wanted to do it because Shayna’s the one that got her basically into pro-wrestling.
“Shayna developed Ronda’s love for professional wrestling, so to her pay her back, they’re gonna do a program. I don’t know if it’s one match, I don’t know if it’s two or three, but based on whenever that out is, they had to get it done now.
“This was the latest they could go. They wanted a long title reign to build it up and to do the whole thing where you can see the (turn) coming, the little teases and everything – they didn’t have time.” - Dave Meltzer, Wrestling Observer
Boxing News: Jake Paul speaks on PPVs
Boxing: "Piracy is rampant, competition for eyeballs non-stop. "Doing a million buys today is like doing two million buys 10 years ago." "current PPV movers no matter the opponent" are Tyson Fury, Canelo Alvarez and self. One of boxing's top 3 PPV attractions; Believes that he is one of the top attractions with Tyson Fury & Canelo Alvarez. "Selling PPV is really hard". "Less than 10 fighters in the world can truly move six figures on their own consistently: Jake Paul
Wagering, TV bodies slam proposed gambling ads ban; AFL wary of impact - June 28th, 2023
Some of Australia’s biggest bookmakers have decried a potential ban on gambling advertisements as an ineffective and short-sighted way to remediate gambling harm, after a parliamentary inquiry report recommended the Albanese government commit to a comprehensive ban across all sectors within the next three years.
Responsible Wagering Australia (RWA) is the body that represents gambling giants including Sportsbet, PointsBet and Ladbrokes. It said the proposal, one of 31 recommendations raised by the House of Representatives standing committee on social policy and legal affairs, was a step too far and jeopardised the future of sporting codes and local broadcasters.
“Other more measured options which could be considered by the government include capping the numbers of gambling ads to be shown,” RWA chief Kai Cantwell said on Wednesday.
“By doing this, the expectations of the community to see less advertising would be met, while also maintaining the crucial support to sporting codes and local broadcasters.”
Tabcorp, which is not a member of RWA, welcomed the proposal after previously joining advocates in supporting a total ban on gambling broadcast advertising.
Tabcorp chief Adam Rytenskild said the report’s release marked an important moment for the sustainability of the wagering industry, reiterating a point from the inquiry’s hearing that the proliferation of gambling advertising is excessive.
“Tabcorp welcomes the committee’s recommendation for a nationally consistent regulatory framework. All wagering operators should have to adhere to the same regulations.”
Tabcorp’s stance is motivated by a keenness to protect its market share, according to rivals, and Rytenskild’s comments offer a stark contrast to RWA chief Cantwell who said the recommendations fail to consider the evidence from the committee hearings earlier this year.
“RWA recognises community concerns around online wagering advertising and there are more effective ways of meeting community expectations,” Cantwell said.
RWA and Free TV Australia, which has acted on behalf of Seven, Ten and Nine (the owner of this masthead), have argued for frequency caps on the number of ads shown across different channels, rather than a blanket ban.
Cantwell said by capping the number of ads, the community’s expectations to see less advertising would be met, while maintaining the support to sporting codes and local broadcasters.
He added a blanket ban through a phased roll-out was “short-sighted, ineffective and not the answer”, and could lead to more Australians turning to illegal offshore markets.
The AFL’s chief financial officer and general manager of broadcasting and clubs, Travis Auld, said on Wednesday it was too early for the league to have a response, and it had been consulting with the federal government about changes that could work.
“Any changes we make and the consequences of those changes need to be well thought through and well understood. There are some significant decisions within there that have impacts potentially on our industry,” Auld said.
He said that money from wagering firms was part of the AFL’s infrastructure, helping the competition keep its prices low, as well as invest in the game at a grassroots level. The AFL has an $8 million a year deal with Sportsbet.
“Of course money is part of it. It’s what allows us to keep our prices where we are, it’s what allows us to invest in boys and girls playing football at this level,” said Auld.
Despite a record $4.5 billion broadcast agreement signed with Seven Network and Foxtel in 2022, Auld said the AFL and both of its partners would represent themselves independently in any conversations around potential financial impacts.
“The commerciality from their point of view will remain known to them. I think we’ve been clear on the impacts on us.”
Free TV Australia’s CEO, Bridget Fair, warned a “kneejerk move” to implement an outright ban “will ultimately hurt viewers and the television services they love”.
“Many of the sports broadcasting deals have been agreed to beyond the three-year phase-out
period for advertising,” Fair said.
An NRL spokesperson said it recognised the significant stakeholder and community interest in gambling, saying it is committed to ensuring the NRL’s approach reflects this interest, “while also encouraging a holistic, evidence-based approach to mitigate the risks of gambling harm more broadly”.
A report earlier this year from the Australian Gambling Research Centre found most Australians (64 per cent) believe governments should play the biggest role in how wagering is advertised.
Dr Kei Sakata, the research centre’s acting executive manager, welcomed the report’s recommendations, saying it is a crucial step in reducing gambling harm.
Sakata also welcomed the committee’s recommendations of a national classifications scheme and effective warning labels for simulated gambling games and loot boxes, as well ongoing funding for gambling research.
(The Sydney Morning Herald)
WWE Money in The Bank breaks records - 2023
WWE Money in the Bank 2023 set a huge company record, as did this week’s edition of Friday Night SmackDown.
Both the June 30 SmackDown episode and the July 1 WWE premium live event emanated from the O2 Arena in London, England.
Both shows were eventful, with passionate UK fans filling the arena on both nights.
During the post-show press conference, Triple H revealed that Money in the Bank 2023 was the highest-grossing arena show in WWE history.
Triple H didn’t specify how much WWE brought in, but this would mean that the show earned more than any other WWE event to take place in an indoor arena.
The Chief Content Officer also revealed that the previous night’s edition of SmackDown was the highest-grossing SmackDown in WWE history.
He did state that over 37,000 fans were in attendance at the O2 Arena across both nights, noting that WWE is proud of the success of SmackDown and Money in the Bank.
As far as attendance figures go, WrestleTix previously reported that 17,617 tickets had been distributed for the sold out Money in the Bank event.
The premium live event was certainly eventful, with Jey Uso pinning Roman Reigns in the Usos vs Reigns & Solo Sikoa Bloodline Civil War.
This marked Reigns’ first pinfall loss since December 2019.
Reading restrictions imposed on Twitter users - July 2, 2023
Elon Musk has imposed temporary reading restrictions for Twitter users, announcing paying customers will be allowed to see more tweets than unverified accounts.
Mr Musk says extreme levels of data scraping has prompted the social media company to limit users to reading 6,000 posts per day.
Accounts without a blue tick will be restricted to 600 posts per day.
New accounts yet to be verified will be capped at 300 tweets.
Several US Agencies Set Up New Crypto Task Force in Arizona to Combat Illegal Online Activity - June 2023
Federal agencies have joined forces to combat crimes involving cryptocurrencies in Arizona after seeing an increase in digital transactions related to narcotics, firearms, and other illicit activity.
On June 15, Homeland Security Investigations in Arizona and representatives from four other federal agencies signed a memorandum of understanding to establish the “Darknet Marketplace and Digital Currency Crimes Task Force,” according to a June 20 press release by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The other agencies who signed the agreement are the IRS, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and the U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona.
Over the past several years, federal agencies have seen an increase in the use of the internet to facilitate illegal transactions involving narcotics, personal information, firearms, and other contraband, the report said, adding that the use of digital currency to facilitate these transactions has also risen.
The task force aims to “disrupt and dismantle criminal organizations that exploit the appearance of anonymity on the darknet or use digital currency to facilitate criminal activities, such as drug trafficking, money laundering, theft of personal information, and child exploitation.”
The new task force is expected to serve the needs of Arizona.
Darknets are internet-based networks that require special software and authorization to access. They’re designed to provide anonymity, making them a haven for criminal activity.
Illicit Crypto Activity
According to a February 2023 report by forensic cryptocurrency firm Chainalysis (pdf), the illicit transaction volume in the cryptocurrency market rose to $20.6 billion in 2022 from $18.1 billion in 2021 and $8.4 billion in 2020.
The share of illicit activity in the overall cryptocurrency activity stood at 0.24 percent. Although this is the second-lowest number in six years, it is up from 0.12 percent in 2021.
Darknet markets and fraud shops made an estimated $1.5 billion in 2022, down from $3.1 billion in 2021, the report said. The reason for the drop is attributed to the shutdown of Hydra Market, a leading darknet marketplace.
“Hydra’s closure prompted a sector-wide decline in darknet market revenues, with average daily revenue for all markets falling from $4.2 million just prior to its closure and to $447,000 immediately after. While drug markets’ collective revenue hasn’t recovered fully, it climbed slowly back toward previous levels in the second half of 2022. Fraud shops, however, have continued to decline,” the report said.
When it comes to scams, U.S. victims of cryptocurrency scams lost five times more money in 2022 compared to other types of internet crimes, according to a June 6 study by cybersecurity company Surfshark.
Each American victim is estimated to have lost an average of $86,000 per year due to cryptocurrency scams compared to the average loss of $16,000 per year in scams involving traditional payment methods.
In total, over $2.3 billion worth of cryptocurrencies are calculated to have been lost to internet crimes across the United States last year.
Crypto Use by Sanctioned Entities
The Chainalysis report also pointed out that 43 percent of 2022’s illicit transaction volume came from activity associated with sanctioned entities. It gave the example of cryptocurrency exchange Garantex, which accounted for the majority of the sanctions-related transaction volume last year.
The U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Garantex in April 2022, but “as a Russia-based business, the exchange has been able to continue operating with impunity,” the report said.
“Transactions associated with Garantex or any other sanctioned crypto service represent, at the very least, substantial compliance risk for businesses that are subject to U.S. jurisdiction, including fines and potential criminal charges.”
America’s rivals like China and North Korea also use cryptocurrency for illicit activities. A June 11 report from The Wall Street Journal claimed that North Korea stole more than $3 billion in cryptocurrency and used it to fund about half of its ballistic missile program.
A May 23 report by Elliptic highlighted China’s use of cryptocurrencies in its fentanyl trafficking operations.
“Elliptic’s blockchain analysis shows that the cryptocurrency wallets used by these [Chinese fentanyl precursor] companies have received thousands of payments, totaling just over $27 million, and that the number of transactions has increased by 450 percent year-on-year,” the study said.
“$27 million would purchase enough precursor to produce fentanyl pills with a street value of approximately $54 billion,” it said.
What's going on at Twitter? Elon Musk's latest controversial decision is 'read limits' - 3rd July 2023
As Twitter imposes limits on the number of tweets users can view, we look back at Elon Musk's tumultuous and confusing ownership of the social media platform.
KEY POINTS
Twitter has limited the number of tweets an unverified user can read to 1,000 a day.
The decision has been taken to reportedly limit data scraping.
Owner Elon Musk has cut the company's value by more than half since October.
Twitter owner Elon Musk has introduced a limit on how many tweets users can view, meaning verified accounts will have a 'read limit' of 10,000 posts a day and unverified accounts can only read 1,000 posts a day.
Twitter's decision was made to discourage "extreme levels" of data scraping and system manipulation by actors, including AI companies, Mr Musk wrote on the platform.
It's the latest eyebrow-raising move at the company since the billionaire bought the company for US$44 billion ($66 billion) and took over in October last year, with many wondering what his strategy is.
Here's a look back at the confusing and controversial decisions at the company, which even Mr Musk admits is now worth far less than what he bought it for - he reportedly sent a memo to staff suggesting it was worth US$20 billion ($30 billion).
Why did Elon Musk fire so much of Twitter's workforce?
One of Mr Musk's first decisions at the company was to sack thousands of workers globally, allegedly to reduce costs.
He has since said around 80 per cent of staff have gone from the company, meaning its books now have around 1,500 staff, compared to over 8,000 before his takeover.
The purge included former chief executive Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal and other executives, and also led to mass sackings of curators and moderators which has had knock-on effects to the product's algorithm and advertisers abandoning it.
Twitter's Australia operation lost most of its workers.
Linda Yaccarino was appointed to take over the reins in May.
Many at the company were hoping the former ad executive would help bring back advertisers who had abandoned the platform since the Musk takeover.
What happened when Twitter introduced verified accounts?
Twitter began charging $12 a month for the iconic blue tick in a 'Twitter Blue' subscription, again under the banner of eliminating data scraping and managing bots.
The tick was once known as a symbol to verify one's identity and granted to high-profile figures such as celebrities, politicians and journalists for free, but those who declined to pay for the new subscription have since lost their ticks.
Mr Musk said that those who have a Twitter Blue subscription are being prioritised in the algorithm.
Twitter Blue users also get access to posting longer videos, the ability to edit tweets and an ad-free experience.
Is Twitter allowing hate speech to go unchecked?
Australia's eSafety Commission has issued Twitter a warning and threat of hefty fines if it does not deal with a surge of online hate.
Mr Musk allowed 62,000 banned or suspended users to be reinstated to the platform, many of which had been banned for hate speech.
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said in June there have been more complaints about online hate on Twitter in the past year than any other platform, and complaints have spiked since October.
Ms Inman Grant said Twitter's policies prohibited hateful conduct on the platform but rising complaints to eSafety and reports of the toxic content remaining on the platform show that Twitter was probably not enforcing its own rules.
"We are also aware of reports that the reinstatement of some of these previously banned accounts has emboldened extreme polarisers, peddlers of outrage and hate, including neo-Nazis both in Australia and overseas," Ms Inman Grant said.
US advocacy group GLAAD has designated Twitter as the most hateful platform towards the LGBTQ+ community.
Research by the UK-based Centre for Countering Digital Hate demonstrated that slurs against African Americans showed up on Twitter an average of 1,282 times a day before Mr Musk took over the platform. Afterwards, they more than doubled to an average of 3,876 times a day.
Reversing ban on COVID-19 misinformation
Similarly, Twitter's terms and conditions were changed to reverse a ban on posting misinformation related to COVID-19.
"Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy," the terms said.
Public health officials condemned the decision and said it could lead to more false claims about the virus or the safety and effectiveness of vaccines.
With additional reporting by AAP.
Sunday, June 25, 2023
Media Man Wrestling Blog: Musk vs Zuck. Potential MMA fight in the UFC Octagon
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Potential MMA fight in the UFC Octagon; UFC boss Dana White dealing with both gentlemen. The Fight Of The Century. Twitter Twit vs Facebook Cyborg
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Netflix finally reveals how much it makes from Australians - 1st June 2023
Netflix made more than $1 billion from Australians last year, a figure the company reported for the first time after deciding no longer to funnel revenues through a Netherlands-based subsidiary.
Accounts lodged by the streaming giant show Netflix Australia made $1.06 billion in 2022, up from $30.7 million the year before.
The increase in reported revenue came after the company’s local subsidiary changed how it bills. It now describes itself as a “distributor of access” to Netflix Service as opposed to a provider of services for its parent company.
It was previously estimated that Netflix made between $790 million and $1.4 billion from Australians, but customers were billed by Netflix International BV. But from January 1 last year, customers were billed by Netflix Australia, meaning subscription revenue was recognised and taxed locally.
The accounts, filed with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, show Netflix Australia paid $966 million to the Netflix Group in distribution fees and other costs, meaning it made just $22.7 million from total revenues of $1.06 billion.
After paying $6.9 million in income tax, it reported $15.8 million profit for the year.
“As Netflix continues to grow and invest in Australia, we want our corporate structure to reflect our business activities here,” a spokesman for Netflix said last year when The Australian Financial Review reported the structural change.
In 2021, Netflix Australia reported $30.7 million in revenue, $2.4 million in profit pre-tax, and $1.5 million in profit after its $868,000 income tax bill.
Netflix does not disclose subscriber numbers for Australia, but the revenue figures included in its latest accounts implies the service has around five million customers locally, if its standard plan, $16.99 per month, is used as a guide. It has four monthly price tiers including a new, cheaper one that now adds some advertising.
According to the Australian Communications and Media Authority, streaming services made a combined $2.49 billion in Australia in 2021.
The disclosure of Netflix’s true Australian revenue comes as the federal government considers introducing quotas that would force streaming companies to spend a certain amount making shows locally.
Some suggestions have been forcing them to spend between 10 and 20 per cent of local revenue on Australian shows, meaning Netflix would be required to spend, depending on the rate, between $100 million to $200 million.
ACMA estimates streaming providers spend $335.1 million on Australian content in the 12 months to the end of June last year, up from $178.9 million the year before.
Netflix has been contacted for comment.
News
Mistakes and miscalculations: How the Murdochs and Fox got it so wrong - 30th May 2023
In August 2021, the Fox Corp. board of directors gathered in Los Angeles. Among the topics on the agenda: Dominion Voting Systems’ $US1.6 billion ($2.5 billion) defamation lawsuit against its cable news network, Fox News.
The suit posed a threat to the company’s finances and reputation. But Fox’s chief legal officer, Viet Dinh, reassured the board: Even if the company lost at trial, it would ultimately prevail. The First Amendment was on Fox’s side, he explained, even if proving so could require going to the Supreme Court.
That determination informed a series of missteps and miscalculations over the next 20 months, according to a New York Times review of court and business records, and interviews with roughly a dozen people directly involved in or briefed on the company’s decision-making.
The case resulted in one of the biggest legal and business debacles in the history of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire: an avalanche of embarrassing disclosures from internal messages released in court filings; the largest known settlement in a defamation suit, $US787.5 million; two shareholder lawsuits; and the benching of Fox’s top prime-time star, Tucker Carlson.
And for all of that, Fox still faces a lawsuit seeking even more in damages, $US2.7 billion, filed by another subject of the stolen election theory, voting software company Smartmatic.
Caught flat-footed
Repeatedly, Fox executives overlooked warning signs about the damage they and their network would sustain, the Times found. They also failed to recognise how far their cable news networks, Fox News and Fox Business, had strayed into defamatory territory by promoting President Donald Trump’s election conspiracy theories — the central issue in the case. (Fox maintains it did not defame Dominion.)
When pretrial rulings went against the company, Fox did not pursue a settlement in any real way. Executives were then caught flat-footed as Dominion’s court filings included internal Fox messages that made clear how the company chased a Trump-loving audience that preferred his election lies to the truth.
It was only in February that Murdoch and his son with whom he runs the company, Lachlan Murdoch, began seriously considering settling. Yet they made no major attempt to do so until the eve of the trial in April, after still more damaging public disclosures.
At the centre of the action was Dinh and his overly rosy scenario.
Dinh, a high-level Justice Department official under President George W. Bush, declined several requests for comment, and the company declined to respond to questions about his performance or his legal decisions. “Discussions of specific legal strategy are privileged and confidential,” a company representative said in a statement.
The second half of 2020 brought Fox News to a crisis point. The Fox audience had come to expect favourable news about Trump. But Fox could not provide that on election night, when its decision desk team was first to declare that Trump had lost the critical state of Arizona.
In the days after, Trump’s fans switched off in droves.
The Fox host who was the first to find a way to draw the audience back was Maria Bartiromo. Five days after the election, she invited a guest, Trump-aligned lawyer Sidney Powell, to share details about the false accusations that Dominion, an elections technology company, had switched votes from Trump to Joe Biden.
Soon, wild claims about Dominion appeared elsewhere on Fox, including references to the election company’s supposed (but imagined) ties to the Smartmatic election software company; Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan dictator who died in 2013; George Soros, the billionaire investor and Democratic donor; and China.
‘Fox News did its job, and this is what the First Amendment protects. I’m not at all concerned about such lawsuits, real or imagined.’
Fox’s chief legal officer Viet Dinh
On November 12, a Dominion spokesperson complained to Fox News Media chief executive Suzanne Scott and Fox News Media executive editor Jay Wallace, begging them to make it stop. “We really weren’t thinking about building a litigation record as much as we were trying to stop the bleeding,” said Thomas A. Clare, one of Dominion’s lawyers.
As Fox noted in its court papers, its hosts did begin including company denials. But as they continued to give oxygen to the false allegations, Dominion sent a letter to Fox News general counsel Lily Fu Claffee, demanding that Fox cease and correct the record. “Dominion is prepared to do what is necessary to protect its reputation and the safety of its employees,” the letter warned.
Fox, however, did not respond to the Dominion letter or comply with its requests — now a key issue in a shareholder suit filed in April, which maintains that doing so would have “materially mitigated” Fox’s legal exposure.
Three months after the election, another voting technology company tied to the Dominion conspiracy, Smartmatic, filed its own defamation suit against Fox, seeking $US2.7 billion in damages. Dominion told reporters that it was preparing to file one, too.
Dinh was publicly dismissive.
“The newsworthy nature of the contested presidential election deserved full and fair coverage from all journalists. Fox News did its job, and this is what the First Amendment protects,” Dinh said at the time. “I’m not at all concerned about such lawsuits, real or imagined.”
The Fox legal team based much of the defence on a doctrine known as the neutral reportage privilege. It holds that news organisations cannot be held financially liable for damages when reporting on false allegations made by major public figures as long as they don’t embrace or endorse them.
An early warning came in late 2021. The judge in the case, Eric M. Davis, rejected Fox’s attempt to use the neutral reportage defence to get the suit thrown out, determining that it was not recognised under New York law, which he was applying to the case. Even if it was recognised, Fox would have to show it reported on the allegations “accurately and dispassionately”, and Dominion had made a strong argument that Fox’s reporting was neither, the judge wrote in a ruling.
That ruling meant that Dominion could have access to Fox’s internal communications in discovery.
That was a natural time to settle. But Fox stuck with its defence and its plan.
Treasure trove
At nearly every step, the court overruled Fox’s attempts to limit Dominion’s access to private communications exchanged among hosts, producers and executives. The biggest blow came mid-last year, after a ruling stating that Dominion could review messages from the personal phones of Fox employees, including both Murdochs.
The result was a treasure trove of evidence for Dominion: text messages and emails that revealed the doubts that Rupert Murdoch had about the coverage airing on his network, and assertions by many inside Fox, including Carlson, that fraud could not have made a material difference in the election.
The messages led to even more damaging revelations during depositions. After Dominion’s lawyers confronted Rupert Murdoch with his own messages showing he knew Trump’s stolen election claims were false, he admitted that some Fox hosts appeared to have endorsed stolen election claims.
During Carlson’s deposition last year, Dominion’s lawyers asked about his use of a crude word to describe women — including a ranking Fox executive. They also mentioned a text in which he discussed watching a group of men, who he said were Trump supporters, attack “an Antifa kid”. He lamented in the text, “It’s not how white men fight,” and shared a momentary wish that the group would kill the person. He then said he regretted that instinct.
There is no indication that Carlson’s texts tripped alarms at the top of Fox at that point.
The alarms rang in February, when reams of other internal Fox communications became public. The public’s reaction was so negative that some people at the company believed that a jury could award Dominion more than $US1 billion. Yet the company made no serious bid to settle.
All along, the Fox board had been taking a wait-and-see approach.
But the judge’s pretrial decisions began to change the board’s thinking. Also, in those final days before the trial, Fox was hit with new lawsuits. One, from former Fox producer Abby Grossberg, accused Carlson of promoting a hostile work environment. Another, filed by a shareholder, accused the Murdochs and several directors of failing to stop the practices that made Fox vulnerable to legal claims.
The weekend before the trial was to begin, the board asked Fox to see the internal Fox communications that were not yet public but that could still come out in the courtroom.
The board learned for the first time of the Carlson text that referred to “how white men fight”. Dinh did not know about the message until that weekend, according to two people familiar with the matter.
By the time the board learned of the message, the Murdochs had already determined that a trial loss could be far more damaging than they were initially told to expect. A substantial jury award could weigh on the company’s stock for years as the appeals process played out.
“The distraction to our company, the distraction to our growth plans — our management — would have been extraordinarily costly, which is why we decided to settle,” Lachlan Murdoch said at an investment conference this month.
The text also helped lead to the Murdochs’ decision to abruptly pull Carlson off the air. Their view had hardened that their top-rated star wasn’t worth all the downsides he brought with him.
Still pending is the Smartmatic suit. In April, Fox agreed to hand over additional internal documents relating to several executives, including the Murdochs and Dinh. In a statement reminiscent of Dinh’s early view of the Dominion case, the network said that Fox was protected by the First Amendment.
“We will be ready to defend this case surrounding extremely newsworthy events when it goes to trial, likely in 2025,” the statement said.
News
Lachlan Murdoch explains $1.2b settlement, says Fox News won’t change ‘successful strategy’ - 10th May 2023
Fox News paid $US787 million ($1.16 billion) to settle a recent lawsuit on its reporting after the 2020 election to avoid a divisive trial and lengthy appeals process, its parent company’s chief executive said.
Lachlan Murdoch, executive chairman and CEO of Fox Corp., also noted that a Delaware judge “severely limited” Fox’s defences against Dominion Voting Systems, which said the network defamed it by airing bogus charges of election fraud that it knew was untrue.
Fox Corp announced that it had lost $US50 million the previous three months, which it attributed to the lawsuit settlement. Murdoch, who answered questions from financial analysts, was speaking in public for the first time since the case ended and Fox fired its most popular anchor, Tucker Carlson. Carlson has just announced he is launching a new show on Twitter.
Murdoch said viewers, and investors, should expect no change in direction from Fox News.
“We made the business decision to resolve this dispute and avoid the acrimony of a divisive trial and multi-year appeal process, a decision clearly in the best interests of the company and its shareholders,” he said.
Fox still believes it was properly exercising its First Amendment rights to report on newsworthy fraud allegations made by former President Donald Trump, even though that defence was shot down in a pre-trial court ruling in the Dominion case, Murdoch said.
That’s important, since Murdoch said Fox intends to use the same defence against a similar lawsuit by another elections technology company, Smartmatic. That case is not expected to go to trial until at least 2025, he said.
Despite being asked directly about Carlson’s exit, Murdoch didn’t mention the former prime-time host’s name and referred to his reign obliquely. Fox has not explained why it cut ties with Carlson.
“There’s no change in programming strategy at Fox News,” he said. “It’s obviously a successful strategy. As always, we are adjusting our programming and our lineup and that’s what we continue to do.”
Although hurt by the Carlson exit, Fox News remains the leading cable news network.
Fox has lost viewers following Carlson’s firing. Last week’s substitute host, Lawrence Jones, reached between 1.28 million and 1.7 million last week in a time slot where Carlson usually drew around 3 million, the Nielsen company said.
Yet Fox has gained more than 40 new advertisers in that hour, the network said, confirming a report in Variety. Advertisers like Gillette, Scott’s Miracle Gro and Secret deodorant that had considered Carlson’s show a toxic environment have signed on.
(AP)
News
Jesse Armstrong on the roots of Succession: ‘Would it have landed the same way without the mad bum-rush of Trump’s presidency?’ - 27th May 2023
It has been the TV drama of our time – a brutal, hilarious unpicking of how power works. As the series comes to an end, its creator looks back at its origin and the unholy trinity of men who helped inspire Logan Roy
My first vivid memory of the project that would develop into Succession was trying to get out of it. It was about 2008 and I was on location for the filming of Peep Show, the UK sitcom my longtime writing partner Sam Bain and I wrote together. Between that show and my work on The Thick of It and In the Loop, and a bunch of other things, I was feeling overcommitted. That particular day we were pretending a very normal field in Hertfordshire was a safari park. I sloped off from set and, hiding from imaginary lions, tried to elegantly step away from the project.
I failed. And in the following months as I wrote, slowly, I became certain the script was a dud. It was stodgy and odd. The original idea, a faux-documentary laying out Rupert Murdoch’s business secrets, with them delivered straight to camera, evolved as I worked into a sort of TV play, set at the media owner’s 80th birthday party. Channel 4 were supportive, but it was an odd form, this docudrama/TV-play, and difficult to make happen. Around 2011, after a read-through in London where John Hurt played Rupert, the project essentially died.
My US agent was the first person I recall suggesting a totally different approach. A fictional family, a multi-series US show. For five years or so, I dismissed the idea, certain that a portrayal of a fictional family would never have the power of a real one. Four works changed my mind: HBO’s excellent Robert Durst documentary, The Jinx; Sumner Redstone’s grimly business-focused autobiography, A Passion to Win; James B Stewart’s propulsive DisneyWar; and Tom Bower’s fascinating Robert Maxwell biography Maxwell: The Final Verdict. These turned the idea of doing a media-family drama without a singular real-life model from a terrible betrayal of reality into a tantalising chance to harvest all the best stories. Here was an opportunity to explore all the most fascinating family dynamics within a propitiously balanced fictional hybrid media conglomerate. I took a long, deep dive into rich-family and media-business research.
I talked about this, as-yet-unwritten, idea in half-ironised terms as ‘Festen-meets-Dallas’
When Sam and I decided to bring things to a close on Peep Show, I flew out to pitch this media show around LA. I had a clear idea of where I wanted to develop it, but my agent persuaded me appetites would be whetted if we had a number of potential homes. So I spent three days doing a round of pitch meetings where I talked about this as-yet-unwritten idea in half-ironised terms as “Festen-meets-Dallas”. No stars, Dogme 95 camerawork. Scared of driving on the five-lane highways, I bumped around town in the back of a Honda Civic while a nice young man from my US agent’s mailroom ferried me between rooms stocked with identical tiny bottles of water and executives of vastly varying degrees of interest.
Eventually, I got to HBO, the place I most wanted the show to land, home to The Sopranos and Six Feet Under. I knew they might be receptive. Frank Rich – once known as the “Butcher of Broadway” for his theatre criticism, but now an in-house consigliere – had championed my work there to the boss, Richard Plepler, and I’d previously developed a show with them. So, out the back of a French-style bistro on a three-cappuccino high, I pitched it to their head of drama and comedy, Casey Bloys.
Sometimes a pitch stretches thin and threadbare, the fabric renting as you go, the other party peeping grimly through the holes. Other times, the air thickens, and you can feel the atmosphere in the room turn oxygen-rich as the enthusiasm you are trying to project transforms into an enthusiasm you are actually feeling.
By the time I left LA, HBO had made an offer and Adam McKay, fresh from The Big Short, had said he would be interested in directing. I’d written another Succession forerunner, a script about the US political strategist Lee Atwater, for Adam and his producing partner Kevin Messick. It had been one of the few LA experiences I’d had where the excitement expressed at the start of the project sustained through the writing and attempts to get it made.
This was 2016 and, once back in the UK, I wrote the pilot through the spring and summer in a one-room flat I rented on Brixton Hill, south London, walking across Brockwell Park each morning, listening to podcasts and reading news about the Brexit referendum. Scotland had recently voted by a narrow majority to stay inside the UK and the abiding sense right before the Brexit vote was, yeah, change looms, it glistens, menacingly, promisingly, but it doesn’t happen. Not really. Really, everything stays the same.
But then it did happen. And across the Atlantic, the Trump campaign was igniting – even if initially his candidacy felt like a slightly amusing, slightly too-vivid flash in the pan. Into early autumn, in fact, all serious people were still explaining to one another that Trump couldn’t happen. Although I suppose, looking back, there was a notable lack of detail in terms of the mechanism by which he would be stopped.
I think a lot of the better films and TV shows I’ve been involved with have at their heart a quite simple impulse around which the more subtle layers are spun. In the Loop’s spark was anger at the Iraq war. Chris Morris’s Four Lions I think was driven by his gut feeling that something was very wrong with the way we understood jihadi terrorism in the UK. Peep Show was about oddball male friendship, perhaps even “masculinity”.
I guess the simple things at the heart of Succession ended up being Brexit and Trump. The way the UK press had primed the EU debate for decades. The way the US media’s conservative outriders prepared the way for Trump, hovered at the brink of support and then dived in. The British press of Rothermere, Maxwell, Murdoch and the Barclay brothers, and the US news environment of Fox and Breitbart.
The Sun doesn’t run the UK, nor does Fox entirely set the media agenda in the US, but it was hard not to feel, at the time the show was coming together, the particular impact of one man, of one family, on the lives of so many. Rightwing populism was on the march across the globe. But in the fine margins of the Brexit vote and Trump’s eventual electoral college victory, one couldn’t help but think about the influence of the years of anti-EU stories and comment in the UK press, the years of Fox dancing with its audience, sometimes leading, sometimes following, as the wine got stronger, the music madder. It was politically alarming and creatively appealing: to imagine the mixture of business imperatives and political instinct that exist within a media operation; to consider what happens when something as important as the flow of information in a democracy hits the reductive brutality of the profit calculation inside such a company. How those elements might rebound emotionally and psychologically inside a family as it considered the question of corporate succession.
For Logan Roy, Murdoch, Redstone and Maxwell were my holy trinity of models. But Conrad Black, Brian L Roberts of Comcast, Robert Mercer of Breitbart, Julian Sinclair Smith of Sinclair, Tiny Rowland, Rothermere, Beaverbrook and Hearst all fed in. The three central models were wildly different, of course: the self-made refugee Maxwell and the already-rich Murdoch, a scion of Australian journalistic royalty, both so different from the tough Boston lawyer Redstone who started with a couple of his father’s drive-in cinemas.
But they were connected by a strong interest in a few things: a refusal to think about mortality (Redstone and Murdoch both used to make the same joke about their succession plan: not dying); desire for control; manic deal-making energy; love of gossip and power-connection; a certain ruthlessness about hirings and firings. And most of all, an instinct for forward motion, with a notable lack of introspection.
Perhaps the best part of Redstone’s autobiography for a casual reader is the opening, where he recounts clinging by one hand to a hotel balcony through a fire. Despite suffering third-degree burns over half his body, years of rehabilitation, excruciatingly painful skin grafts, he says this event, after which he made all his biggest business plays, had no impact whatsoever on the trajectory of his life.
Whether due to all this grist, or the aligning of the political planets (in)auspiciously, the pilot came unnervingly easily. Getting names in a script to feel real can be hard for me – they’re a tell-tale sign of whether I’m living inside it. Kendall, Shiv, Roman, Connor. They all felt right straight off the bat. Their inspirations, I suppose, were the children of these magnates: three of the Maxwell kids, the ones closest to the business (the boys, Ian and Kevin) and to their father (Ghislaine). Brent and Shari Redstone, with whom Sumner played a tough and complicated game of bait-and-switch over CBS-Paramount succession. And the Murdoch children, Prudence, Lachlan, James, Elisabeth, Chloe and Grace.
But getting those names for the Roy children made them feel like their own individuals to me. It allowed me to pour in just what I wanted from the real world, fill each with all the faults they might have inherited, while giving me room to add some extra, just for them.
Greg and Tom came fast, too. Tom from two roots. One was thinking about the sort of lunks I’ve occasionally seen powerful women choose as partners. Plausible, manly men with big watches and a soothing affable manner. That mixed with the deadly courtier, a more 18th-century figure, minutely attuned to shifts in power and influence, an invisible deadly gas that occurs in certain confined places and rises to kill anyone unwise enough not to take precautions. A hanger-on sustained by some Fitzgeraldian illusions about the world, a sense that perhaps the rich really are different from us and a romantic ambition to make it in New York City.
Greg, I guess, was a distant relative of the sort of political adviser I had myself briefly been. Gormless, clueless, out of place and gauche. But not without an eye for a deal. And, I hope, a little more wheedling and insinuating than I ever was.
The scenes flowed. I put all research aside and followed my nose and wrote pretty much exactly what I wanted
The charge between these two semi-outsiders struck me from the start as toxic and comic. Tom, the interloper, is like an organism that has found a precarious but rewarding perch above some deep oceanic vent and adapted itself to conditions perfectly. He is not pleased at all to see a similar creature scuttling along hoping to share the same cramped evolutionary niche. That first half-bullying, half-provocative exchange they share in the outfield at a softball game in the pilot landed them right in the middle of a stew they’ve been cooking in ever since.
The scenes flowed. I had eaten a very large amount of research, but once I was writing I put it all aside and followed my nose and wrote pretty much exactly what I wanted. It felt funny but odd and broken-ended, fragmentary, abrupt, oblique and slightly brutal. When I emailed it off, I had the familiar feeling that Adam, Frank and HBO might email back to say not only was it not good, it wasn’t even actually, technically, a script. But their response was frighteningly positive. Almost as though the script was finished, after what was, I thought, a quick first draft. I think every other episode of Succession has gone to at least 30 drafts – usually 50. The pilot barely hit 15.
We had our read-through in New York on US election day 2016. Before we started, I made the sort of joke lots of people made that day, assuming the polls were right and Hillary Clinton was going to squeeze it. That night we gathered in Adam McKay’s apartment to watch the results roll in. Much later, I walked a long walk back from Soho to where I was staying near the United Nations looking at the electoral college numbers projected on to the Empire State Building.
We started filming the next day.
I still wonder whether Succession would have landed in the same way without the mad bum-rush of news and sensation Trump’s chaotic presidency provided. Trump wasn’t the firebombing of German civilians, and nor is Succession Slaughterhouse-Five, but I do sometimes think about Vonnegut saying no one in the world profited from the firebombing of Dresden, except himself.
This is an edited extract from Succession: The Complete Scripts – Seasons One, Two and Three (Faber & Faber), out now at £20 each. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copies for £17.60 each from guardianbookshop.com.
The final episode of Succession airs in the UK on Sky Atlantic/Now on Monday. Jesse Armstrong donated the fee for this article to the Writers Guild of America strike assistance fund.
News
LIV Golf announces new pay-per-view option - 26th May 2023
"The hope for LIV is to grow off the success first seen on YouTube in 2022, where the league attracted tournament audiences of several hundred-thousand views in the U.S. and abroad."
Going forward, LIV Golf Series events will be available via a pay-per-view option on YouTube.
The new deal was detailed by James Colgan of Golf.com.
“Less than six months after signing a media rights agreement with the CW, LIV announced Friday that it has created a new, pay-per-view broadcast option to run on YouTube,” Colgan reported. “The PPV broadcast will cost $3 per tournament day, LIV said in a release announcing the decision, and will run in addition to the league’s agreement with the CW.”
Colgan also detailed that “A LIV source indicated that the CW is aware of the decision to introduce a pay-per-view model, and that the decision does not violate any of the league’s preexisting broadcast agreements.”
“The hope for LIV is to grow off the success first seen on YouTube in 2022, where the league attracted tournament audiences of several hundred-thousand views in the U.S. and abroad. The league already has its own direct-to-consumer subscription platform, LIV Golf Plus, which the PPV channel will run counter to. LIV broadcasts will continue to be streamed for free on the CW app.”
This announcement comes less than two weeks after a rather embarrassing moment for the tour. One week before LIV’s Brooks Koepka triumphed at the PGA Championship, the Saudi-backed golf series was in Tulsa.
On one hand, it was a perfect showcase event for LIV. Two of its most high-profile players, Dustin Johnson and Cam Smith, went to a three-way playoff (along with Branden Grace). But most of the people watching did not get to see Johnson’s eventual triumph.
The CW, the league’s primary broadcast partner, went away from coverage in the vast majority of its markets, showing “regularly scheduled programming.” Jim Nantz was quick to make a joke at LIV’s expense on the matter at the PGA Championship. The CW also announced a change, saying that all events will be shown to their conclusions going forward.
[Golf.com]
News
WWE Night Of Champions Reportedly Earned Highest Viewership Of Any Saudi Arabia Show - 31st May 2023
According to a report from Fightful Select, Saturday's Night of Champions PLE scored WWE the highest viewership out of any of the company's Saudi Arabia events since the partnership between the two began in 2013. The report states that Night of Champions brought in an 18% increase in viewership compared to last year's Crown Jewel event, and the company is reportedly quite happy with its holiday weekend results.
Night of Champions was headlined by Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn successfully defending the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championship against Roman Reigns and Solo Sikoa of The Bloodline, with a major angle taking place on the show that saw The Usos turn on Reigns after more than a year of build-up and tension.This marks the second time a tag team match has served as the main event of a major WWE show in recent months. Additional matches on the show included Seth Rollins vs. AJ Styles to decide the first WWE World Heavyweight Champion, a singles match between Becky Lynch and Trish Stratus, and a Backlash rematch pitting Brock Lesnar against Cody Rhodes, among others.
To date, WWE has held nine PPVs and PLEs in Saudi Arabia, along with three house shows. Back in 2019, WWE announced that they had "expanded their partnership" with Saudi Arabia, and that they would be hosting two major events per year in the Middle Eastern nation through at least 2027. Though it hasn't been announced yet, WWE will likely return to Saudi Arabia for another Crown Jewel event later this year.
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Pat McAfee Comments On Empty Seats At AEW Double Or Nothing - 31st May 2023
All Elite Wrestling's Double or Nothing pay-per-view took place this past weekend at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. During the event, Wrestlenomics' Brandon Thurston tweeted images of empty seats inside the venue. Wrestling Observer's Bryan Alvarez also posted a photo from his ringside position, which showed many unoccupied places behind Orange Cassidy after he retained the AEW International Championship in a Blackjack Battle Royal. Former "WWE SmackDown" commentator Pat McAfee has weighed in with his thoughts.
"Anytime you get a shot away from hard cam, you know what I mean, you can really see a lot of things," McAfee said on "The Pat McAfee Show." "AEW found out this weekend or whatever at one of their events, it's like three quarters of an arena completely empty. They don't want that photo out anywhere."
Ahead of the pay-per-view going live on Sunday night, WrestleTix revealed 10,229 tickets had been distributed for an 11,641 setup inside the T-Mobile Arena, leaving 1,412 tickets available. An Anarchy in the Arena match headlined the show, with Blackpool Combat Club's Bryan Danielson, Jon Moxley, reigning ROH World Champion Claudio Castagnoli, and Wheeler Yuta picking up the win in that bout against The Elite's Kenny Omega, Matt Jackson, Nick Jackson, and "Hangman" Adam Page.
AEW's next major standalone show, All In, which will take place on August 27 at Wembley Stadium in London, England, has currently sold over 65,000 tickets and has a gate of over $8 million. No matches have been announced for AEW's first event across the pond as of this writing. Ticket sales for All In have slowed following an initial surge.
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WWE-UFC merged company to be called ‘TKO Group Holdings’ - 16th May 2023
A name has emerged for the group.
Coming out of WrestleMania, it was announced by Endeavor that an agreement had been reached with WWE and the company would be merging with UFC to form a new sports and entertainment company.
The deal has not been formally finalized but a name for the merged group has been revealed. CNBC’s Alex Sherman and Mike Calia published a story and an Endeavor spokesperson confirmed to the outlet that the new group is going to be called ‘TKO Group Holdings’.
It will trade under the New York Stock Exchange as ‘TKO’.
The merger between WWE and UFC is being valued at $20 billion. Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel will be the CEO of TKO Group and Vince McMahon is going to serve as Executive Chairman.
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Nick Khan Says WWE In Talks With International Cities For 2024 PLEs
It sounds as though WWE will continue expanding its PLEs into international markets next year. Speaking at the JP Morgan Global Technology, Media & Communications Conference, WWE CEO Nick Khan stated that the company was discussing the potential for additional overseas shows in 2024.
"We're in conversations now with a lot of international cities about doing 2024 shows there," Khan said. "Also, part of the intent is to match those up with our media rights, even if they're not up to over-deliver for incumbent partners who can then invite their partners in the international city to the event, and host them. It's good for our overall business." Khan's comments came as part of a conversation about countries offering subsidies to WWE for bringing shows there, as the company brings a great deal of revenue to the city for major events. Khan cited recent events in Puerto Rico as well as the Dallas, Texas area as examples.
Previous rumors pointed toward Australia as a potential location for a future international WWE PLE. However, it's unknown if negotiations with the country have progressed in the months since.
WWE has steadily ramped up its major international shows over the last five years, with the company holding several yearly events in Saudi Arabia, as well as last year's Clash at the Castle and the upcoming Money in the Bank both being held in the United Kingdom. It seems fans around the world should stay on the lookout for upcoming announcements regarding WWE's international schedule in 2024.
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“We Let People Go”: Months After $21.4 Billion UFC-WWE Deal, Endeavor CEO Recalls “Horrible” Time for Organization - 2nd June 2023
The year 2020 brought unprecedented challenges for individuals and organizations alike, and the UFC was no exception. The promotional frontman Dana White has reflected on those uncertain times and shared the struggles the organization faced in keeping things going. Despite the pandemic, White was determined to keep the show running and provide entertainment for fight fans worldwide. While the rest of the world was shut down, the UFC managed to organize consistent events, albeit on a smaller scale. However, this arduous journey was not without its fair share of hardships.
Ari Emanuel, the CEO of Endeavor, the parent company of the UFC and William Morris Endeavor talent agency, revealed the significant challenges they encountered during the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though Endeavor recently secured a massive $21.4 billion deal to acquire the WWE, during the COVID-19 days, the company found itself at rock bottom struggling to stay afloat.
When Covid-19 posed a threat to the UFC
In an interview on the “Freakonomics Radio” podcast, Emanuel shared how the pandemic affected the company financially. During the interview, podcast host Stephen Dubner asked Emanuel, “Did you think COVID might kill Endeavor?”. Reflecting on this, the 62-year-old CEO replied, “It was bad,” He continued, “I’d never had to fire that many people.”
Emanuel mentioned that the continuation of UFC fights during the pandemic played a crucial role in saving the company, accounting for approximately 70% of their revenue that year. Further talking about the struggles to keep the organization alive during the pandemic, the Endeavor CEO stated, “We had our ESPN deal. We then started making deals for writers. So we stored all the cash. We didn’t let anything out. We let people go, which was horrible, or furloughed them.”
Through the storm, Endeavor’s leadership team, led by Emanuel, proved to be the lighthouse that guided them to safer shores. The UFC’s resilience and the implementation of innovative strategies, such as the ‘Fight Island’ events, not only salvaged the company but also became a beacon of hope for other professional sports leagues.
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“Very, Very Easy for Jon Jones”: Ex-UFC Star Ruthlessly Shuts Down Tyson Fury Days After Boxer’s Callout of UFC Champ in Ugly Public Feud - 1st June 2023
The claim made by Joe Rogan that Tyson Fury would stand no chance against Jon Jones has sparked an intense and never-ending debate. Recently, another prominent figure from the UFC, the world of mixed martial arts, has jumped into this heated discussion. However, ‘The Gypsy King’ himself strongly opposed the take of the UFC commentator and didn’t hold back in expressing his views. In fact, he went as far as bashing Rogan and proudly proclaimed himself to be ‘the baddest man on the planet’.
As the back and forth continued between Fury and Rogan, UFC president Dana White has stepped in, proposing a potential fight between Fury and Jones. However, the WBC heavyweight champion firmly refused to step into the octagon, dismissing the idea altogether. This decision faced an immediate backlash from fans who had eagerly anticipated the materialization of this debate inside the fighting arena.
Despite the disappointment felt by fans, it becomes evident that the 34-year-old boxer has no intention of venturing into the octagon. On the contrary, a former UFC welterweight challenger believes that Fury would fare well in the realm of mixed martial arts. However, he warns that there may be unforeseen challenges along the way.
Tyson Fury will have a Jon Jones threat in MMA
During a recent interview, the former UFC fighter Dan Hardy shared his reflections on the latest happenings in the combat sports world, ranging from boxing to MMA. However, it was the Tyson Fury-Jon Jones debate that took center stage.
The 41-year-old Hardy began by heaping praise on ‘The Gypsy King’ for his potential in MMA, stating, “Tyson Fury doesn’t come from a boxing background. He comes from a fighting man background. Tyson Fury sees himself as a fighter first that boxes, and I think he looks at mixed martial arts and sees lots of ways he can capitalize on the changing of the rules.”
Continuing his analysis, Hardy mentioned Fury’s collaboration with Tom Aspinall and how he has showcased proficient elbows and knees in the videos shared with him. ‘The Outlaw’ confidently stated, “I feel like Tyson Fury would be really good if he crossed over to mixed martial arts. Of course, there’d be a lot for him to learn. The main issue would be, he’d be very, very easy for Jon Jones to take down. And I think that’s something that Tyson has not experienced and has not and has not really quite comprehended.”
Meanwhile, Jon Jones recently made a strong statement in his heavyweight debut, securing a first-round victory against Ciryl Gane at UFC 285 after returning from a three-year-long hiatus.
This certainly explains Dan Hardy’s warning to Tyson Fury. How do you think ‘The Gypsy King’ would fare in MMA?
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Dwayne Johnson to Return as Luke Hobbs in New ‘Fast and Furious’ Standalone Film - 7th June 2023
Dwayne Johnson is returning to the “Fast and Furious” universe with a new standalone film, reprising his franchise role as Luke Hobbs.
Universal Pictures announced the project on Thursday. Longtime “Fast and Furious” collaborator Chris Morgan wrote the untitled film’s script. Plot details were not available, though individuals familiar with the deal said the new movie will bridge between the events of the just-released “Fast X” and the upcoming “Fast X: Part II,” which is expected in 2025. Johnson just appeared as Hobbs, a diplomatic security service agent, in a credits scene for “Fast X.”
Johnson will produce the film with Dany Garcia and Hiram Garcia for their Seven Bucks Productions, along with Vin Diesel and Samantha Vincent via their One Race Films. Additional producers include Chris Morgan for his Chris Morgan Productions, Jeff Kirschenbaum for Roth/Kirschenbaum Films and Neal Moritz for Original Film.
Screenwriter Morgan wrote and produced “Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw” and “The Fate of the Furious.” He’s also scripted and executive produced the fifth, sixth and seventh entries in the franchise. Directed by Louis Leterrier, “Fast X” opened at No. 1 around the world in May with $320 million and became the second-biggest global opening of 2023.
Johnson announced Hobbs’ return with a video posted to social media with the caption: “Your reactions around the world to Hobbs’ return in ‘Fast X’ have blown us away. The next ‘Fast & Furious’ film you’ll see the legendary lawman in will be the Hobbs movie that will serve as a fresh, new chapter & set up for ‘Fast X: Part II.'”
“Last summer Vin Diesel and I put all the past behind us,” Johnson added. “We’ll lead with brotherhood and resolve – and always take care of the franchise, characters & fans that we love. I’ve built my career on an ‘audience first’ mentality and that will always serve as my north star.”
Johnson is repped by WME, lawyers Gang, Tyre, Ramer, Brown & Passman, Inc. and The Lede Company.
Seven Bucks has co-produced films like Disney’s “Jungle Cruise” and the DC Studios entires “Black Adam” and “DC League of Super-Pets.” Original series include NBC’s “Young Rock” and “The Titan Games.” Johnson will next produce and star in “Red One” at Amazon Studios and Disney’s live-action “Moana.”
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13 States Comment On Possibility Of Allowing Gambling On WWE Matches
In March 2023, CNBC reported that WWE was working toward legalizing gambling on wrestling matches, enlisting the services of accounting firm Ernst & Young, with Michigan, Colorado, and Indiana mentioned as the initial targets. As of now, betting on WWE matches is only available at offshore sportsbooks like BetOnline.ag, based out of Antigua, and Bovada, based out of Latvia. Betting on matches in America would open up new streams of revenue for WWE and add some mainstream legitimacy to the sports entertainment powerhouse.
Since that report broke, however, it's been nothing bad news for WWE in the gambling department. Dave Meltzer has reported that WWE's efforts aren't going well — Colorado denied talking to WWE and said that "By statute, wagers on events with fixed or predicted outcomes ... are strictly prohibited in Colorado." Indiana told Casino.org that it had "no interest in approving wagering on scripted events," and Michigan also denied any recent talks with WWE, while New Hampshire Lottery Commission executive director Charlie McIntyre deemed it "very unlikely" betting on WWE gets approved in New Hampshire.
In light of this, Wrestling Inc. reached out to multiple states about the possibility of legalized betting on WWE matches. Each gambling commission was asked 1) how likely WWE would be to succeed if they pitched gambling on matches to them, and 2) if there were any regulations, laws, or statutes that barred betting on something with predetermined outcomes. 13 states -– Arizona, Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, and Washington -– responded. While their responses varied slightly, overall, they paint a picture of increasingly fewer opportunities, and increasingly more obstacles, for legal gambling on WWE matches to get approved.
At least three states say they wouldn't allow gambling on WWE as a matter of policy, even if there are no explicit laws against it.
Kerry Hemphill, Manager of Sports Betting Product at the Oregon Lottery, made it clear that gambling on WWE wouldn't be allowed as a matter of policy in the Beaver State: "Although there is no law or statute that forbids it, Oregon Lottery sports betting policy is to not accept wagers on scripted events with predicted outcomes."
Seth Elkin, Assistant Director of Communications for Public Affairs for Maryland Lottery and Gaming, also told us his state had made a determination on the matter. "Maryland's sports wagering law and regulations prohibit forms of wagering that are contrary to public policy or unfair to bettors," he said. "We've determined that it is unfair to bettors, and therefore not in the public's interest, to accept wagers on sports entertainment events that have predetermined outcomes, like professional wrestling."
Meanwhile, a representative from the South Dakota Department of Revenue simply said, "WWE wrestling matches would not be eligible for sports wagering in South Dakota."
Iowa and Ohio say no to betting on predetermined events
Two more states said that predetermined events weren't permitted, but made a point to highlight policy and procedure. Brian J. Ohorilko, Administrator of the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission, also shot down gambling on wrestling for the time being.
"Predetermined events are not permitted in the State of Iowa," he told Wrestling Inc. "Iowa law defines and permits professional sporting events and sports-related events; however, fixed or predetermined outcomes are not explicitly permitted. As such, and for other integrity concerns, the commission has not permitted predetermined events in any of the approved wagering markets."
Ohorilko also brought up the process that would be required for any kind of legalization: "From a practical standpoint, any request would need to come with a legal opinion as to how this would be permitted under Iowa law," he said. "It would need to go through legal review with consultation from the AG office. If legal review passes, the commission would still need to review policy and integrity concerns with respect to the activity having predetermined outcomes. Approval would be needed before this type of wagering activity could take place."
Ohio tells a similar story. Jessica Franks, Director of Communications for the Ohio Casino Control Commission, pointed us towards Rule 3775-11-01 of the Ohio Administrative Code — the process for adding to Ohio's catalog of wagers and events. She said the Commission's review of such requests includes, but is not limited to, the following criteria:
The quality of the governing body's documented integrity program.
The general availability of information related to the governing body.
The professional or skill level status of athletes.
The history of integrity related to events sanctioned by the governing body.
This already puts the WWE in shaky territory, but it's seemingly locked out for good with the following consideration: "Please note that the Commission will not approve requests for wagers/events involving 'Events which are pre-recorded or in which the outcome has been otherwise previously determined.'"
Arizona and Connecticut have laws against betting on fixed outcomes
At least two states have laws in place that would ban gambling on WWE matches.
Max Hartgraves, Public Information Officer at the Arizona Department of Gaming, provided a straightforward statement: "Arizona statute prohibits gambling on fixed events."
Meanwhile, when asked how likely WWE would be to garner approval for gambling on matches, Kaitlyn Krasselt, Communications Director at Connecticut Department of Consumer Protections, said "I cannot speculate on that." That said, she did inform Wrestling Inc. about state regulations on gambling: "Connecticut law only allows wagering on sporting or athletic events. WWE is sports entertainment. The 'matches' are predetermined by the company and are scripted. There is no regulation body for professional wrestling, and WWE is one of several companies that offers this type of entertainment. With a predetermined outcome, this would not be considered a sport. It is considered entertainment. Wagering on the Oscars, for example, is also not permitted in Connecticut."
That last part is significant, since CNBC's report mentioned that WWE executives were using Oscar betting as an example for regulators.
Maine and Montana agree with most of their colleagues
Two states specifically cited the statements from Colorado, Indiana, Michigan, and New Hampshire in their responses. After hearing that four other states had expressed skepticism over betting on WWE, Maine Gambling Control Unit Executive Director Milton Champion said, "On the surface, without looking into the matter, I would concur with my colleagues. Operators will submit with their application events that they want to take wagers on, and I shall approve them."
Daniel Iverson, Content Manager for the Montana Lottery, said something similar. "Montana does not intend to add WWE markets, for the same reasons our counterparts cited," he advised, before directing any questions on state law to the Montana Department of Justice Gambling Control Division.
New Jersey and Massachusetts punted, for now
Two states we contacted declined to comment on the matter, not wanting to address issues that haven't come before them yet. Thomas Mills, Communications Division Chief of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, said, "I appreciate your question, but am unable to speculate on a hypothetical action the Commission may or may not take."
Dan Prochilo, Public Information Officer at the New Jersey Attorney General's Office, responded that "The Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) cannot comment on any hypothetical discussion with an operator or league about future sports betting opportunities." He added that "In New Jersey, an entity seeking permission for a contest to be authorized for wagering on a sports event is required to submit its proposal to DGE for evaluation and approval pursuant to state law and regulations."
Prochilo also provided the state's legal definition of a "sports event" for the purposes of gambling. Notably, it includes the phrase "A 'sports event' shall include any live competition or talent contest, including awards competitions[.]"
New Jersey and Massachusetts are two of the only states that allow betting on the Oscars, with New Jersey okaying it in 2019 (the first state to do so) and Massachusetts greenlighting it in 2023. It's unknown if WWE will approach either state or how each state would respond, but at bare minimum, WWE's argument to treat wrestling like the Oscars for betting purposes might carry some weight.
Washington and New Mexico illustrate the challenges of Tribal gaming
Washington is unique among the states who responded to us, in that sports wagering is only available on Tribal lands yet still regulated by the state. Sports wagering was legalized, subject to terms of Tribal/State Compacts, on Tribal lands in 2020. All wagering, even online betting, must take place on Tribal lands, and each casino decides bets within certain limitations. The Angel of the Winds Casino and Resort and the ilani Casino Resort, for example, don't 100% overlap on sports offered for betting.
But WWE, or any wrestling, won't be joining those offering under current rules and regulations. Dan Wegenast, Agent In Charge for the Tribal Gaming Unit of the Washington State Gambling Commission, pointed Wrestling Inc. towards the Tribal/State Compacts for sports wagering. He also stated that "Washington State law and the Tribal/State Compacts for sports wagering ... prohibit wagers on events with known outcomes."
To further illustrate the complications of garnering approval for gaming on Tribal lands, a representative from the New Mexican Gaming Control Board told Wrestling Inc. that sports betting is illegal in their state, but legal with some Tribes. That said, New Mexico does not regulate Tribal gaming, meaning that approval would likely have to be worked out with each Tribe individually.
There are other obstacles, too
It's worth noting that gambling laws are constantly changing. Many states without gambling –- such as North Carolina -– have spent years hammering out legislation that would approve gambling off Tribal lands. Additionally, for states with legalized gambling, internal policies are not inherently laws, and can be subject to change under the right circumstances.
That said, even if WWE manages to get gambling on matches approved anywhere, that's only one part of the battle: They still need casinos and/or sportsbooks to be willing to accept wagers at all, and there's resistance in this field, as well, as demonstrated in subsequent coverage from CNBC. FanDuel deems it unlikely that they'd ever accept bets on WWE, noting that the Academy Awards –- which held once per year -– are vastly different than dealing with WWE's weekly programming. Additionally, when BetCEO Adam Greenblatt was asked if he had any interesting in accepting bets on WWE, he responded "NFW."
Between the overwhelming majority opinions of the 13 states who responded to Wrestling Inc., the states that have already responded, and the reluctance of sportsbooks to include anything that looks less than credible, WWE faces an increasingly uphill battle if they want to make betting on wrestling matches legal anywhere in the United States.
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