By Walt HickeyHey folks! Our longtime friends at Garbage Day are doing three live shows in July at Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn, and I’m working on them. It’ll be a great time; more details at the bottom of the newsletter, and you should come!
SailGPThe boat racing league SailGP exists primarily for two reasons: cultivating the optimal audience to receive advertisements for Rolex watches and creating a new way to give trophies to Australians. Started in 2019 by the billionaire founder of Oracle, the league has grown from just six teams to 12. The Italy SailGP team sold last month at a $45 million valuation, just two years after Team USA sold for a valuation of $35 million. The league announced Monday it will add two expansion teams by 2026, provided they have not run out of rich countries with maritime traditions to buy them up.
SKUsEvery year, 15,000 new food products launch, but 90 percent of them fail within the first 12 months. One strategy that food entrepreneurs use to get a leg up is buying defunct brands that have long been phased out and relaunching them under new management. Take the case of Slice soda, which was discontinued by Pepsi more than two decades ago but relaunched in January by the organic juice company Suja Life. The company had been trying to find an angle into the sparkling beverage space without having to start at zero. Slice’s brand awareness is at 50 percent among those age 35 to 44, and even if the new formulation has nothing to do with the old Pepsi beverage, that’s a decent head start. Slice isn’t even the only example in the beverage aisle: Odwalla (discontinued by Coca-Cola in 2020) was acquired by Jumex, a Mexico-based manufacturer. The 1980s and ’90s energy drink staple Jolt is also heading back to shelves following its 2009 bankruptcy after Redcon1 acquired its license. Reminds me, one of these days I need to talk to a mouse about some significant digits. Christopher Doering, Food Dive WebtoonSeveral comics that were originally published on Webtoon have been tearing up the physical comic book sales charts, none more than Solo Leveling, the RPG action story that has reliably been near the top of the charts among graphic novels. It’ll be a huge summer for that comic, which releases its 13th and final print volume in August. Another fixture of the charts is Lore Olympus, the colorful mythic epic that has accumulated 1.4 billion views and 6.6 million followers on the platform. Heartstopper also joins these two comics, with its Netflix adaptation making a huge impact on the fortunes of both Webtoon and the streaming service.
The People Demand NoovieCinemas have had a rough couple of years, and one way that the notoriously tight-margined exhibition business is able to improve profit margins is by acquiescing to advertisements ahead of movie screenings. This has had the effect of films actually starting anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes after their stated showtime, which can be frustrating for fans, even if that extra couple of minutes of commercials is a boost to cinema finances. AMC’s preshow runs 25 to 30 minutes already, and is cramming in more ads while trying to keep it under a half hour. Reality is, though, audiences are getting bright: according to EntTelligence, only 60 percent of moviegoers are in seats when trailers start playing. In the big cities, cinemagoers have wised up, with just 42 percent of New York and L.A. moviegoers in seats in time to see every trailer. Pamela McClintock, The Hollywood Reporter ChildcareThe average annual cost of caring for a child reached $13,128 in 2024, up 29 percent since 2020, outpacing the rate of inflation. A married couple earning the median income in their state is spending 10 percent of their earnings on child care, while a single parent is spending 35 percent of theirs. In 45 states (and D.C.), child care for two kids costs more than a mortgage does, and in 49 states (and DC) it costs more than rent.
PiracyAnime has become very central to the streaming business, with essentially every streaming network having at least some skin in the game on anime content as of 2025. What makes anime distribution special is its ability to stream on more than one platform at once and its insusceptibility to the same platform exclusivity deals as domestically-produced and financed content. If anything, the main problem anime has in the United States is abundance, particularly on piracy sites; the largest anime piracy site, HiAnime, had an estimated 364 million monthly visits last October. That’s 21 million more than Disney+ had in the same month. Saint SebastianThe painting Saint Sebastian by the artist El Greco was slated for auction at Christie’s with an estimated sale price of $7 million to $9 million. However, that is all on indefinite hold amid a suit from the Romanian government alleging that the painting was stolen from them. The work was acquired by King Carol I of Romania sometime before 1898 and (according to Christie’s) was bequeathed to the Romanian Crown sometime around 1914. Romania contends that it was unlawfully removed from the national collection in 1947 by King Michael I who was fleeing the country to escape the Communists and was taking anything that wasn’t nailed down with him. This then led to an extensive legal battle from 1977 to 1997 to obtain restitution. The Romanians agreed to dismiss Christie’s as a defendant, and will now have it out in court with Dmitry Rybolovle, a Monaco-based Russian billionaire best known as the consigner of Salvator Mundi, the incredibly convenient da Vinci painting. Kabir Jhala, The Art Newspaper Ryan Broderick and the crew at internet culture newsletter Garbage Day are putting on three live shows this summer, and Numlock is a part of them. If you’re in NYC and looking for something fun, learn more about it here and get tickets to the first, second, and third shows, it’s going to be very, very fun.
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