Good morning,

It was yet another incredible, fabulous week: Kim Masters took a reading from Hollywood’s rising Ellison anxiety meter; Julia Alexander explained Netflix’s latest plan to win all the attention, while Eriq Gardner previewed the company’s A.I. red lines; Bill Cohan prophesied the fate of Bloomberg L.P.; John Ourand and Julia A. broke down the Disney–YouTube TV brawl; Ian Krietzberg considered the latest A.I. bubble warnings; Dylan Byers found the writing on the walls of MSNBC NOW’s new studio; Lauren Sherman revealed Mamdani’s stylist and the collateral damage from the botched Marc Jacobs deal; Sarah Shapiro spotlighted an escalating department store turf war; Rachel Strugatz hypothesized some Estée Lauder M&A options; Marion Maneker dissected $500 million in European art sales, and Julie Brener Davich detailed a Cartier marketing coup.

Meanwhile, Peter Hamby talked Gavin and Trump with Josh Shapiro; Leigh Ann Caldwell assessed Trump’s “nuclear” wishes, while John Heilemann evaluated his third-term dreams; and Abby Livingston flipped through Mikie Sherrill’s winning playbook.

Check out these stories, and others, via the links below. And stick around for the backstory on how it all came together.

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Embark on a journey – literal, metaphorical, and undeniably poetic.

Discover the new Montblanc collection.

Lauren Sherman explains the Marc Jacobs deal collapse.
and…
Rachel Strugatz surveys the ELC revival play.
meanwhile…
Sarah Shapiro investigates Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom’s upmarket strategies.

Marion Maneker rewrites the market narrative, and combs through the sales data from London and Paris.
and…
Julie Davich explores the Cartier Collection.

Kim Masters captures all the looming anxiety around the WBD sale process.
and…
Eriq Gardner unpacks Netflix’s new A.I. red line.
meanwhile…
Julia Alexander presages the streamer’s next frontier.

Ian Krietzberg reports on the mind-boggling race to build data centers in space.

Dylan Byers envisions MS NOW’s future.
and…
Julia Alexander and John Ourand trade notes on the Disney-YouTube wars.

Bill Cohan divines the fate of Bloomberg L.P. after Bloomberg.

Leigh Ann Caldwell contemplates Trump’s filibuster leverage.
and…
Abby Livingston unveils the secrets of the Mikie Sherrill ground game.
and…
Peter Hamby chats up presumptive ’28 Democratic contender Josh Shapiro.

Linda Wells solves the hair-loss crisis.
and…
Justin Lupe shares her favorite form of revenge.
meanwhile…
Jennifer Noyes offers the perfect guide to competitive gift-giving.

Dylan and Julia Alexander chop it up with analyst Rich Greenfield on The Grill Room.
and…
Ourand and Fanatics Betting & Gaming C.E.O. Matt King chew over the NBA’s gambling woes on The Varsity.
and…
Lauren checks in with fashion world zelig Derek Blasberg on Fashion People.
and…
John Heilemann and the incomparable David Axelrod discuss the off-cycle elections on Impolitic.
and…
Matt and Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw hold their ’25 movie draft on The Town.
and…
Kim and Peter ponder the rampant Ellison anxieties across Hollywood on The Powers That Be.

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On Tuesday evening, I took the 1 train north from Puck’s headquarters on lower Greenwich Street to the 14th Street subway stop—my old childhood stomping grounds—and headed out for the evening. I was hosting a small event with my partner, John Ourand, for a bunch of swells from across the sports business industry at The Golden Swan on 11th Street, right beside the old Annie Leibovitz town house.

Walking through the crisp fall evening, I was reminded of the earliest days of our company—back when we forged the business out of a parlor floor apartment on Bank Street. (Air Mail, too, was birthed in that magical little studio.) During those exhausting but exhilarating months, there was hardly room in our 250-square-foot crucible to take a private phone call. So multiple Puck employees could usually be spotted with their earbuds in, circling the block, or posted up at Oslo, the neighborhood’s stuffy but undeniably excellent coffee shop. I recalled sitting on this or that stoop while on hold with various insurance providers and lawyers, or watching dreams emerge in the minds of writers and early company executives. I’m not usually all that sentimental or nostalgic, but I cracked a smile as I passed by WXOU (an early Puck haunt) and the White Horse Tavern (the famous Dylan Thomas haunt), both proud of what we’d accomplished in the past four-plus years and excited about the next 40.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

Embark on a journey – literal, metaphorical, and undeniably poetic.

Discover the new Montblanc collection.

I was also excited to catch up with friends and partners from the NBA, NFL, MLS, MLB, NHL, the networks, Fanatics, and elsewhere. Alex Bigler, Puck’s inimitable V.P. of creative strategy, had created baseball cards of our journalists as a parting gift. She’d even gone slightly overboard on the make-believe stats on the back of the cards. To wit: She assigned our partner Eriq Gardner a .867 “batting average” for predicting legal verdicts. (Puck, after all, is a company that rewards a light touch, endless hustle, and extraordinary creativity…)

The conversation was off the record, as is always the case at these dinners, but I wouldn’t be breaking any bonds of trust by acknowledging that it was filled with hypotheses about future rights deals and broadcast negotiations and commentary on the duration of this business cycle. Readers at all familiar with John’s work, and the singular analytical acumen of our partner Julia Alexander, surely recognize the fraught nature of this moment. We’re passing through an era in which sports leagues must balance the cashflow optimization afforded by insurgent streamers with the reach still provided by linear television. NASCAR now has a half-dozen deals with media distributors, both legacy and O.T.T. This year, you can stream an NBA game virtually every night—but many will still watch LeBron and Steph on NBC or ESPN. The NFL seems increasingly promiscuous amid this brave new world, as it should be. Meanwhile, the entire industry is speculating about the future destination of a slate of international rights. My guess is YouTube…

Indeed, YouTube is fast becoming one of the largest players in the entire sports media business—a trajectory that you might expect for a media entity helmed by an obsessive sports fan and brilliant orthogonal thinker, Neal Mohan, which just happens to be a shingle of a $3.4 trillion enterprise. YouTube broadcast its first NFL game earlier this year, and it’s been gingerly testing the waters of influencer-first alternative programming for some time. Meanwhile, YouTube TV has become one of the largest distributors in the business.

Earlier this year, YouTube TV successfully negotiated renewal deals with Fox and Comcast. These days, though, it’s at loggerheads with Bob Iger and Disney. Carriage disputes are as old as time, and they usually feature nemeses of fairly equal stature. But we’re not in Kansas anymore: no media company besides Netflix has YouTube’s leverage. The outcome of this particular battle will become a harbinger for the industry and define the contours of all future negotiations. I behoove you to spend some time this weekend reading John and Julia’s excellent discourse on the topic, The YouTube TV Offensive, which offers a number of clues regarding how détente may be achieved.

But if you only have time to read one piece this weekend, I’d turn your attention to Peter Hamby’s excellent interview with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who is among the most likely contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028. Josh Shapiro Is Done Lying Low breaks ground on a number of key topics—Newsom, Trump, winning over independents, etcetera. Hilariously, though, the piece created a newscycle of its own on Friday regarding Shapiro’s insistence that the NFL preserve the sanctity of the tush push, the borderline cheap-shot Q.B. sneak play that the Eagles perfected during the Jason Kelce era, and leveraged to a Super Bowl last season. (Someone sent me a Fox News article about it…)

Shapiro is a major Eagles fan, but he also has a number of key insights about how the Democrats can regain their nerve and confront MAGA—and, frankly, confront their own identity crisis. It’s one of the great stories of our time, and precisely what you should expect from Puck.

Have a great weekend,

Jon

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