🥇 NBC wins gold at the Olympics

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TOP STORY
🥇 NBC wins gold at the Olympics

The U.S. might’ve struck gold, but NBC could be the biggest winner of the Paris Olympics.

Instead of boring you with a backstory, let’s get into some of the viewership numbers: 

The Opening Ceremony on July 26th drew 28.6 million viewers, the highest for a Summer Olympics since the London 2012 Games, which had over 40 million.

The games:

• Last Thursday, NBC drew 28.5 million viewers, almost double the 14.5 million from the same day at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.

• 13.5 million people tuned in for Team USA’s basketball semifinal win over Serbia.

• 12.7 million fans watched the GOAT, Simone Biles, and her teammates on July 30th.

Towards the end:

• The Women's Soccer Final had 9 million viewers, the most since 2004. 

• The Men's Basketball Final had 19.5 million viewers, the most since 1996.

• Final Saturday, which is, you guessed it, the last Saturday of the Olympic Games, had 30.7M viewers—three times more than Tokyo's final Saturday.

In total:

• NBC averaged 31.6 million viewers in primetime over 14 days, up 77% from the Tokyo Olympics, which had a measly 17.8 million. 

• Peacock streamed a record 20.3 billion minutes of Olympic coverage, up 21% from the combined viewership of Tokyo 2020 and the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics.

ENTERTAINMENT
🎢 Disney needs some help

Last week, Disney reported that its coveted theme park business isn’t doing so hot.

In 2023, Disney's Experiences segment made up about 37% of the company's total revenue, around $32.6 billion, meaning that when the theme parks aren’t doing great, Disney isn’t doing great.

I guess they will have to start relying even more on those overly loyal park hoppers.

Well then, let’s see these not-so-great numbers:

• Disney's Experiences segment revenue rose by just 2% to $8.39 billion, a significant drop from the 13% increase in the same segment in 2023.

• Despite a 3% rise in theme park revenue and stable attendance, operating income still dropped 6%.

So, it's not terrible, but Mr. Johnston is right; that is pretty flat.

What seems to be the problem? 🤔

Well, as is the case with most things in life, the problem is cash—cold, hard cash.

With inflation and the basic cost of living rising faster than Noah Lyles in the 100M race over the past couple of years, people just don’t want to spend their extra hard-earned cash on a trip to Disney.

And it’s not like Disney is making it any easier.

• A single-day admission to Walt Disney World in Florida could cost more than $430 for a family of four.

• Over on the best West Coast, Disneyland raised the price of a five-day ticket by 16% to $480 at the end of 2023.

• And that’s not even considering the overly priced churros, turkey legs, and Mickey-shaped ice cream we all end up scarfing down.

But do not fear; Disney’s solution is one I can get behind: a massive expansion.

Not long after the troubling news about people not visiting their parks, Disney used their annual D23 event to announce significant changes coming to their parks.

We can’t get into all the new awesome things coming to the parks—that’d take too long—but my personal favorite is definitely ‘Villains Land,’ “home to the villains you know and those you loathe, where “happily ever after” may feel like just a distant dream.”

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
🤖 J.P. Morgan unveils new A.I. tools

JP Morgan is becoming the Oprah of A.I.: you get a chatbot, you get a chatbot, you get a chatbot.

Over the past few weeks, the U.S.’s biggest bank has deployed generative A.I. tools, known as the “LLM suite,” to over 60,000 of its employees.

What for? The suite will assist with tasks like writing emails, summarizing lengthy documents, problem-solving using Excel, and many other routine things.

• The A.I. tools are expected to become as common at the bank as Zoom.

• And we all know how much corporations love their Zoom meetings, so this is a big deal.

Now, the move may seem like a no-brainer. I mean, who wouldn’t want an AI-powered boost to their company?

But it’s a pretty interesting shift, especially considering that JPMorgan restricted employees from using ChatGPT just last year.

So why say yes to the A.I. dress now? 

• Duh, because JPMorgan didn’t want to expose its data to external providers like OpenAI.

• “Since our data is a key differentiator, we don’t want it being used to train the model.”

Now that they’ve created their own A.I. tools, they can supercharge productivity while keeping their top-secret secrets under wraps.