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Denyer spitballs on betting

Betting

This podcast has been one of our best performing. Not a surprise, Simon Denyer is one of the smartest guys in the room.

Part of the conversation was about betting.

A question I've asked a few times on the podcast is about where betting sits in the private equity playbook.

I was struck by how bullish George Pyne was on TGL, and how explictly he referenced it as a potential betting product.

The p/e money likes betting for semi-obvious reasons to do with risk diversification and revenue predictability.

As Denyer notes, when evaluating sports investments,

Why has the DCMS commissioned a Parkrun consultation?

Law

I’ve just finished Dan Wang’s Breakneck. Strong recommend (no affiliation).

Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future

Why can’t we build things anymore?

Wang’s book tackles this lament, which runs through the political conversation from pot holes to HS2.

The lawyer vs engineer framing (Warning, contains nuance).

Blaming lawyers for blocking progress is a trick beloved of populists the world over. They do it because it works. Lawyers are unpopular, until you need one on your side.

So, let’s be careful with the lawyer-engineer binary; I admire China’s bridges but don’t want to live there

Music as tap water

The Scroll

Spotify for Sport anyone?

This is from something Jimmy Iovine said on a podcast.

Since the labels lost control of the formats, tech companies commoditised the product.

Look at the video streaming wars. Netflix, HBO Max, Disney Plus are in a bloodbath. But they have a distinct weapon: Differentiation. If you want to watch Stranger Things, you need Netflix. If you want The Last of Us, you need HBO. Yet, if you look at music: Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Tidal all offer the exact same product: A library of 100 million

🧵Prediction markets

Betting

'This is a bad idea. It is a very, very, very bad idea'.

Substack just did a deal with Polymarket.

From that link to Brian Moritz:

Imagine for a second that instead of Polymarket, this was FanDuel announcing an exclusive partnership with Substack. Or Draft Kings. What would your reaction be? What would everyone’s reaction be?

'Not Holy Grail truth'. I've been reading feature interviews with people from the prediction market firms. A comms playbook is emerging. Specifically, they talk a lot about truth. Kalshi co-founder and CEO Tarek Mansour defined markets as 'making the world a little bit

Did you just feel that? It was jeopardy

The Product

Today's podcast is about how product innovation has changed cricket's audience and the problems that has created for a game wedded to a 20th century economic model.

'You watching this?'

There’s been an unusual feel to the current ICC T20 World Cup in India and Sri Lanka, one you don't often get during the early rounds of a major global sports event: Uncertainty.

England felt it against Nepal in their first game. ‘You watching this?’ was the gist on WhatsApp last week. In Colombo, Pakistan were 119 for seven in the 18th over, being dragged to the edge

Idea dump

Data

The tyranny of targets - how we've allowed quantifiable metrics to seep in to every aspect of our life, and the consequences of that. Source: The Score by C Thi Nguyen. Builds on Charles Goodhart of 'Goodhart rule' fame, that suggests metrics become corrupted when 'pressed in to service' as targets. The problem is not just that we contort our behaviour a bureaucratic incentive, it's that we cease to realise that we're contorting our behaviour at all. All metrics are reductive by design and the simplicity changes how we judge what matters and what can be cast aside. The outcome

Denyer spitballs on betting

Why has the DCMS commissioned a Parkrun consultation?

Music as tap water

🧵Prediction markets

Did you just feel that? It was jeopardy

Idea dump

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