Welcome to The WC — your weekly shot of awesome.
Today we’ve got:
- Five ideas to whet your appetite
- Why you should never bet on a parley
- The best way to invest in film finance
- A review of the art market in 2023
- The good, bad, and ugly from the 2023 World Cup
Table of Contents
Choose your poison
I have two main jobs at Alts:
- Write about stuff that interests me in a way that’s compelling to you
- Help sign up clients to sponsor these newsletters so everyone at Alts Towers can pay their bills. Want to sponsor an issue? Message us!
I like the first job a lot more than the second one.
With that in mind, we’re piloting five newsletters over the coming months — all stuff I know I like and I think you’ll like.
Click “I want this” under each one you’d be interested in. You’ll be notified when they launch.
We’ll prioritise the most popular ones.
Venture Letter
A deep dive into a hot startup raising capital every week. Fill up your call sheet with top tier deal flow.
IPO Brief
You weekly briefing on upcoming IPOs along with insights and analysis.
Saudi Rising
Saudi Arabia is aggressively declaring itself a tier one economy and has a trillion dollar pocketbook to back it up. Everything you need to know to stay ahead.
Finance Wrapped
Can’t keep up with all the finance and investing newsletters clogging your inbox? I’m curating the best into one easy to read digest.
Investing in change
Climate change will profoundly affect existing industries like real estate, energy, and agriculture. Everything you need to invest in the 21st century’s biggest challenge and opportunity. More stuff like my piece on how climate change will affect American residential real estate.
The house always wins
And with parleys, the house is winning more than ever.
If you’re not into sports betting (god bless you), a parley is where you make a bet that several outcomes will come good at the same time.
e.g. if you correctly predict the winner of six different games this weekend, you get a massive payout. If any one of those is wrong, you get nothing.
Parleys appeal to the lottery ticket instinct in all of us. A $10 bet placed on six outcomes you feel pretty good about could net you $500 or more.
But parleys rarely pay off. Six wagers on outcomes that are each 80% likely only come good 26% of the time.
So statistically speaking, you’re not likely to win.
But the biggest problem — and the reason casinos make a 20% hold (margin) on parleys vs an average 5% on single outcome bets — is that their hold compounds for each bet.
Each leg is subject to that margin, and it multiplies each time.
Sports books are taking advantage of all this. Their marketing machines are pushing parleys, which are now 60% of all wagers compared with 20% only two years ago.
Don’t play parleys.
Not so horrible
Last week, Stefan wrote a great piece on an indy film looking for investment. It’s called A Jewish Christmas, and you should check it out if that’s your thing.
It got me thinking about which films make the best investments, and they’re maybe not what you’d think.
Horror films are a goldmine.
They’re stuffed full of no-name actors, don’t need very many special effects, and the scripts are often, well, not great.
They’re super cheap, so even though they may not do Spider Man numbers, the ROI can be through the roof.
Jason Blum, founder of Blumhouse Productions, is the undisputed king of this model.
His studio released:
- The Conjuring: 1,285.09% ROI
- The Purge: 1,264.95% ROI
- Insidious: 1,985.33% ROI
- Paranormal Activity: 4,405.30% ROI
After the fantastic response to Stefan’s piece on A Jewish Christmas, we’re thinking about producing a lot more content around film investment — we may even launch a Horror Film Fund. Click here if you want to stay in the loop.
How’s art doing in 2023?
Not great Bob.
Artnet is out with its recap of the first half of the year, and while it’s not blood-in-the-street territory yet it’s not been a banner year for traditional physical art.
After staging a blazing comeback from the pandemic in 2021 and 2022, when near-zero interest rates and (let’s be honest) a healthy dose of boredom flooded money into everything from historical masterpieces to animal NFTs, the great global marketplace for fine art lost a whole lot of value—and dynamism—in the first half of 2023.
Some key stats:
- Fine art sales are down 14% YoY
- Ultra-contemporary (1974 to present) is down 26% YoY
- Sales by the mega-auction houses — Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips — are down 22% YoY
- Revenue from ultra-high-end pieces ($10m and above) is down 51%
There are some glimmers of light, though, as well. While online sales were down 5% through the first half of 2023, they’re still up 300% since 2019.
Where does women’s football (soccer) go from here?
It’s been a complicated–and very political–World Cup (Felicidades a las rojas).
First, the good news.
Nearly 2m people watched the games in person, beating estimates by over 500k.
The England – Australia semifinal was the most watched television programme in Australia for twenty years.
The tournament generated more than $570 million in revenue, breaking even for the first time. That’s still only 10% what the men’s tournament generates, but it’s up significantly from four years ago.
Finally, while the female players still earn far less than their male counterparts, FIFA aims to close that gap by 2026.
The outlook for women’s football is strong, and I think there will be a number of fascinating (and lucrative) investment opportunities here over the next decade or so.
And the bad…
There was a strong undercurrent of injustice that ran through the tournament, particularly with respect to womens’ place in the game. Last week, you read about the sordid and overtly sexist history behind the beautiful game. Women were banned from playing the game for decades in much of Europe.
There’s still a lot of work to be done, and much of that was evident over the last fortnight.
FIFA’s folly
Ahead of the final, FIFA president Gianni Infantino told the female players:
“Pick the right battles. You have the power to change. You have the power to convince us men what we have to do and what we don’t have to do. Just do it. With men, with Fifa, you’ll find open doors. Just push the doors.”
It was not received well.
Norwegian footballer Ada Hegerberg jibed “Working on a little presentation to convince men. Who’s in?”
English runner-up Lucy Bronze refused to shake Infantino’s hand after the final.
Lucy Bronze snubs FIFA President Infantino’s handshake 48 hours after he tells Women players to "convince us men" in the ongoing fight for equality. Proof you can lose a game but still be a Winner 💪🙌 pic.twitter.com/BuVU8x3fxN
— Men in Blazers (@MenInBlazers) August 21, 2023
America Falls
For Americans, it was a disappointing result.
The tournament favourites were knocked out early by Sweden in a game the Americans should have won, but they failed to take their chances.
Before the Sweden match (and others), several members of the team chose not to sing the American National Anthem, and Megan Rapinoe took a knee. The protest sparked criticism from conservatives, and former President Donald Trump blamed the team’s wokeness for their loss.
“I’m thrilled they lost,” said former Fox News host Megyn Kelly. “You don’t support America, I don’t support you.”
Pretty gross no matter how you look at it.
Spain wins but loses
Spain, which beat the odds (and England) to take home the trophy, was mired in its own controversy. The Spanish male game has got a long history of success at both the international and domestic level, and every level of the football bureaucracy is dominated by a culture of machismo and misogyny.
The two primary antagonists are the national team coach, Jorge Vilda, and the Real Federacion Espanola de Futbol (RFEF) President, Luis Rubiales.
Jorge Vilda
A year ago, fifteen members of the team called for the manager to be sacked citing bizarre policies forbidding them from locking their hotel room doors at night, among others.
The Spanish FA stood by their manager, and only three of the fifteen played in the tournament. The animosity between players and coaching staff persisted through the World Cup.
As my excellent colleague @jbraidwo points out, a celebration to sum it up. Coaching staff one side, players another pic.twitter.com/ATvNVn1Iyv
— Miguel Delaney (@MiguelDelaney) August 20, 2023
There’s also footage of Vilda appearing to grope an assistant’s breast during the match.
Luis Rubiales
This is where it gets (even more) bizarre.
During the trophy presentation, Rubiales kissed las rojas forward Jeni Hermoso on the lips. She said immediately afterward that she “didn’t like that.”
It doesn’t stop there.
- Rubiales was filmed making obscene gestures during the match.
- He has been accused of using RFEF money to pay for orgies
- He also kissed match winner Olga.
Insanely FREF seems to have forged a statement from Hermoso, which she’s said she had nothing to do with.
Latest on Luis Rubiales from Spanish media:
— Semra Hunter (@SemraHunter) August 22, 2023
•Jenni was asked to appear together in apology video. She said no
•Jenni never actually spoke to press. The Federation comms dept pretended(!) to be her, made up the statement(!)
Getting more shameful, disgraceful by the minute pic.twitter.com/PNDWtAEpAo
Amid calls for his resignation, Rubiales responded:
¿El beso con Jenni? Idiotas hay en todas partes. Cuando dos personas tienen una muestra de cariño sin importancia, no podemos hacer caso a las idioteces.
Translation – “The kiss with Jenni? Idiots are everywhere. When two people have an insignificant show of affection, we can not listen to the idiocies”
The calls are getting louder, and the Spanish Prime minister has got involved. Rubiales may actually be forced to resign.
Women in Spain are claiming victory, saying this is a first step toward equality and the softening of the country’s machismo culture.
Longtime readers know I’m super bullish on women’s sports — particularly football and particularly in the US. I’m looking forward to seeing the sport evolve.
Bonus!
What I’m learning about
Shouting at the tide is pointless. At Alts Towers, we’re looking at how we can use AI to uncover trends and ideas that are worth exploring. Early entrants here are newsletters like Yellowbrick Road, which does this for stock picks.
It’s very early, but there’s a promising future here.
What I’m reading
The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch – Just in case AI doesn’t work out.
That’s all for this week; I hope you enjoyed it.
Cheers,
Wyatt
Disclosures
- This issue was sponsored by our friends at Divvy and FundHomes
- There are also a couple affiliate links sprinkled in.
- Our ALTS 1 Fund doesn’t have a stake in anything here.
