Good morning,

Thanks for reading The Backstory, your weekly digest of the best new work from Puck.

It was another incredible week here at Puck, as usual: Matt Belloni got to the bottom of UTA’s expensegate; Dylan Byers chronicled the Lemon-Musk fallout; Julia Alexander deciphered Netflix’s sports strategy; and Baratunde Thurston envisioned Hollywood’s A.I. judgment day. Meanwhile, Peter Hamby chatted with Kamala Harris; Tara Palmeri got the readout from Mar-a-Lago’s H.R. department while Eriq Gardner reported on Trump’s catch-and-kill jiu jitsu; and Julia Ioffe previewed the next year in Ukraine. Also: Bill Cohan revealed Zaz’ debt maturity edge; Teddy Schleifer dissected the D.C. TikTok circus; Lauren Sherman eulogized a former fashion mini-icon; and Rachel Strugatz broke the news of Glossier’s imminent sale.

FASHION:
Lauren Sherman reveals the details of Outdoor Voices’ demise and the latest drama in the Matches saga.
and…
Rachel Strugatz breaks the news that Glossier is headed for a sale.

WALL STREET:
Bill Cohan pores over Warner Bros. Discovery’s debt repayment schedule.

SILICON VALLEY:
Teddy Schleifer investigates Yass, Trump, and the TikTok flip-flop.

MEDIA:
Dylan Byers wades into the UTA spat and examines Don Lemon’s legal options.
and…
John Ourand uncovers the secret “think tank” trying to remake college sports.

WASHINGTON:
Tara Palmeri gathers all the dish on the putative Trump cabinet bake-off.
and…
Eriq Gardner double-checks the former president’s lawyers’ work.
and…
Julia Ioffe forecasts Ukraine’s critical year.
and…
Peter Hamby talks Gaza, the border, and reelection with Vice President Kamala Harris.

PODCASTS:
Matt and Julia Alexander analyze Ted Sarandos’s sports initiatives on The Town.
and…
Tara and The Mooch discuss Trump’s new inner circle on Somebody’s Gotta Win.
and…
Peter and Dylan explain the Kassan, Lemon, and Musk of it all on The Powers That Be.

Meanwhile, I also encourage you to take advantage of our article gifting feature. You can share our work with your colleagues, friends, and family. Subscribers are entitled to 5 article gifts per month.

Funnily enough, John’s cinematic universe had been on my mind. I was moving through Los Angeles—a couple meetings here and there, a cozy party at Bill Cohan’s Hancock Park pied-à-terre—en route to a quick family vacation up the coast. And it just so happened that the Kellys found themselves staying at the same hotel as the players and staff from the Minnesota Timberwolves, who had posted up in Los Angeles amid a back-to-back against the Lakers and Clippers, before flying out to Salt Lake City for a weekend game against the Jazz.

The players and their wives had taken over the joint, it was fair to say. And while my kids tried to surreptitiously spot Ant-Man and Rudy Gobert in the gym or eating their training meals by the pool, I couldn’t help but appreciate the extraordinary choreography of it all: the scripted practices, media availability, restricted family time, off-field business considerations, and more. Indeed, running a professional sports team is one of the greatest high-margin businesses outside of SaaS or platform technology. E-comm billionaire Marc Lore and former Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez bought the Timberwolves a few years ago for $1.5 billion. And given the league’s recent deal flow—the Phoenix Suns set the market with a $4 billion purchase price last season—I presume the club’s value has appreciated precipitously in three years, especially given the winning product on the court. And just imagine all the free cash flow generated off of a couple hundred employees. (Although, yes, some of them make eight-figure salaries…)

Digression aside, I was eager to chat with John, who was excited to give me the download on his latest market-altering scoop. He’d just uncovered that Brian Rolapp, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s consiglieri, was part of a 20-ish person “think tank” intending to help manage college football’s inevitable professionalization and full-blown industrial monetization. For years, the college game has been trending in this direction, but John was the first to report that an unofficial working group had formed to advance its multibillion-dollar march toward bigger TV deals, collective bargaining, likely secession from the rest of collegiate athletics, and presumably, unimaginable marketing opportunities. Rolapp may have joined the group, largely composed of university presidents and athletic directors, out of the goodness of his own heart. (One of his kids played football at Michigan; another promises to be highly recruited.) But it was also mesmerizing to imagine how the NFL could one day participate in this transformation.

John’s excellent story, College Football’s Final Fantasy, elegantly delineates the size of the economic opportunity presented by the professionalization of college football. And it also suggests how the NCAA, the governing body of amateur athletics, is powerless to beat back the tide.

Naturally, John’s work dovetailed gracefully with a stupendous piece authored by Puck’s streaming expert, Julia Alexander, which contemplated Netflix’s gradual encroachment into live sports. In Netflix’s Live Sports Vulcan Chess, Julia ponders the learnings that the Netflix data machine is hoovering in from its docuseries, such as Full Swing and F1: Drive to Survive, and wonders aloud when co-C.E.O. Ted Sarandos will put his chips on the table to acquire the broadcast rights to a major professional league. After reading John and Julia’s work, I wondered if Netflix might already be eyeing a deal with a post-consolidation, post-NCAA college football league down the road.

Of course, Sarandos once famously said that Netflix was aiming to become HBO before HBO could become Netflix. Could the same analogy hold with CBS Sports? Only time will tell… Meanwhile, perhaps David Zaslav is stealthily oriented this way, too. In Is the Zaz Correction Coming?, Bill articulates the latent bull case for Warner Bros. Discovery, which all comes down to its debt repayment schedule and elevating the recurring revenue from the streaming unit.

We’re obviously obsessed with media and entertainment here at Puck, but as we enter the full throttle of campaign season, I also wanted to turn your attention to a few excellent pieces that define Washington’s current mood. In The Kamala Comeback, Peter Hamby shares his candid chat with the vice president. The two dig into Gaza, immigration, abortion, and the Trump of it all. Meanwhile, in Bidenmentum & Britt V.P. Odds, Abby Livingston conveys the low-key euphoria percolating through Official Democratic D.C. after the president’s gaffe-free State of the Union. And in the thrillingly enjoyable Inside Trumpworld, the Cabinet Casting Begins, Tara Palmeri shares the moods and org-chart jockeying inside Mar-a-Lago. Biden-Trump 2.0, after all, is one of the true stories of our time, and you can always expect to read about the inner sagas and dish, serious and otherwise, here at Puck.

Have a great weekend,
Jon