Sunday Reads And Listens...It Is Hard To Lose Money Buying A Sports Team Or Land In Muskoka and The Wierd World of LLM's.

Good morning.

I am luckily spending a few days in Muskoka cottage jumping between my friends Adam and Deena and Rob and Jen. I am catching some great weather in Muskoka which always makes it more special.

Ellen is off on her annual sisters trip in Europe and I head to The Pyrenees in a few days for my cycling trip.

Onward…

I have sports teams on my mind a lot these days because of our investment in Grass Clippings which is building an incredible Par 3 Championship (stadium) course in Tempe, AZ, running the Grass Clippings One, building the software that runs the tournament(s), the course and much more as well as a league and teams that will extend beyond the first golf course.

Yesterday, Pete from Grass Clippings sent me this article about the sports team and live events Industry that perfectly captures the moment we are in. Sixth Street - which manages more than $70 billion - is betting big on sports team and live events.

Carlyle Co-Founder David Rubenstein said in an interview that ‘it is very difficult to buy a sports team and lose money’. If David Rubenstein has ever visited Muskoka he would say the same thing. Since the start of 2019, when private equity firms were allowed to acquire minority stakes in major US sports leagues, more than $120 billion in private equity ad venture capital have been funneled into the sports industry, according to Pitchbook. Sixth Street Partners (a $74 billion firm), known mostly for direct lending has already now made several billion dollars’ worth of investments. Alan Waman, their CEO, says technology streaming and social media are changing the team-fan dynamic.

Howard here again…I will add that as this crowding of capital into the major US leagues accelerates, money will be lost. But, at the same time, the social and cultural and media changes taking place across the US and the World is giving rise to new sports and leagues (like Grass Clippings) that will become a home to all this capital.

NOTE - If you are interested in learning more about the Grass Clippings league and team ownership just email me and I will connect you to the company

As for a few other reads and listens this week…

The Conan O’Brien interview with Steve marin and Martin short is hilarious.

The Liam Neeson one was excellent and funny as well.

Tadas at Abnormal returns has curated a great list of podcasts and best of’s this week.

Twitter/Titter/X - as I predicted - is letting Elon’s new AI company train its models on the streams. The Twitter ‘hedge fund’ is here and is the best revenue/profit model Elon has. I doubt X investors get that benefit of course because that is how Elon rolls. It is what I pitched Jack and Ev way back in 2007 when I started Stocktwits. Twitter is the ultimate real time LLM (Large Language Model).

Here is a great list of reads covering ‘the wierd world’ of LLM’s’.

In the meantime Facebook’s Threads launched a desktop version and is getting much better. There is an alternative for many. I use it a little bit.