'Bloomberg Technology' Full Show (09/12/2022)
From the heart of where innovation money and power collide. In Silicon Valley and beyond. This is Bloomberg Technology with Emily Chang. I'm Emily Chang in San Francisco and this is Bloomberg Technology. Coming up in the next hour Elon Musk tries to back out of the 44 billion dollar Twitter deal again traded for Jackson.
Again all this today before the whistleblower is scheduled to testify on Capitol Hill. How could that change the trial. We'll discuss. Plus streaming platforms going all out for sports broadcast rights. A conversation with Amazon's global sports video. Vice president on a big ticket deal for
Thursday night football and more leagues. And making bets on the block chain and NFL teams start startup backed by Serena Williams. Just got a big deal with the NBA. We're gonna talk to a top exact and so rare. Later this hour. All of that in a moment.
But first I want to get a look at the markets. Tech leading gains in equities with key inflation dated come later in the week. Bloomberg's at Ludlow is in New York with the latest. And hey we also got some breaking news off the bell. I want to go over quickly. Peloton co-founder and executive
chairman John Foley is leaving the company. The company announced after the market closed Monday. The chief legal officer has now cushy who is also the co-founder. The company is also leading and he will be replaced by Tommy Alba Iran whose new Newberry executive. She becomes the chief legal officer.
It was a really buoyant day in the main session Monday. The Nasdaq 100 up for a fourth straight day its best run of gains since early July. And as you said that eye on a key August CPI print. We want to see inflation cooling because of a big Fed meeting next week. Elsewhere in the market less performance
in the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index or SOX yields kind of holding steady. And Bitcoin actually had a pretty strong session as we take over into Tuesday session around twenty two thousand five hundred dollars per US token semiconductor space a soft spot. The market on Monday news reports that the Biden administration is going to codify some up expand its curbs of U.S. exports of chip technology to China was principally the chip equipment makers those that make the machines that make the chips that were the worst performers on the Sox including the likes of FMD. And as always and so much technology
news to go over some of the names we're keeping an eye on and sticking with the chip space. Intel up three tenths of one percent. But a Bloomberg scoop sources say they're re-evaluating their spin off an IPO of mobilized the automotive tech company. They're thinking about a lesser value or lower valuation and delaying that market conditions such as they are. Apple having its best day since May. Early preorder data. The latest generation of iPhone looking strong. And Twitter.
You know what about that. And down one point nine percent. A third rejection of a third mosque attempt to walk away from this deal. Indeed. All right Ed Ludlow thank you. Let's talk a little bit more about Twitter Musk now.
Twitter rejecting that latest effort to cancel the deal yet again saying it's quote invalid and wrongful. His third attempt to walk away from this deal. And third time's not the charm. That whistleblower former Twitter employee Peter Zak Coe a.k.a.
Mudge testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday. Here to discuss Bloomberg's Jeff Feely in Wilmington Delaware and Alex Brinker in San Francisco. So Alex first of all what are we expecting to hear from Peter's at Echo on Capitol Hill tomorrow.
Yeah. So I think that the hearing tomorrow will probably follow two lanes of conversation. There'll be questions around the data privacy concerns around the bots and fake accounts that Zach Coe has alleged that the company either ignored or didn't disclose. But I also expect the Senate Judiciary Committee to focus on some more of the data privacy issues that legislators care about. That might be a little less relevant to
the acquisition but increasingly relevant as D.C. has been able to push through antitrust legislation but has not gotten a lot of traction on data privacy. So they might take this opportunity to lean into some of those themes as well. Now Jeff Elon Musk is trying to use new information that Twitter signed a seven million dollar separation agreement with Peter Co. Back in June Musk trying to use that as a reason to cancel the deal. What exactly is he trying to say here. Well he's basically saying that that payment constituted something outside the ordinary course of business. When you have these buyout agreements
going on one of the provisions that's often in there says that the seller has to continue to run the business in the ordinary course. Mr. Much contention is this seven million dollar severance payment was somehow tied to silencing Mr.
Zack go so that he would not bring forth his his complaints publicly. So that that he claims is another reason that there's been a material adverse event. And he should be able to cancel the deal. It does sound like a lot of money 7 million dollars to get this guy to go away Alex and then he ends up you know blowing the whistle anyway. Can you tell us a little bit more about what happened here between DAX and Twitter.
Yeah. Emily the sticker shock that you're having might be some of the reason why Musk feels like he can lean into this as an argument that this type of settlement should have been brought to his camp and it's outside the regular course of business. So this was a guy who is an executive on the security side was brought in a number of years back and oversaw a lot of the important kind of security pieces and the teams that worked on those things internally at Twitter.
So he is a person who you know claims that he has the kind of insider knowledge on this. The company says well look you could have actually made some changes on these things. So there is an interesting kind of back and forth here.
Emily I will point out it has been reported that in that settlement agreement he was still allowed to blow the whistle to the government. To the government. If there were any issues. So seven million dollars definitely sticker shock definitely. That kind of third strike that Eli Honest claiming allows him to get out of the deal but did leave that door open for us to hear from Peter Zuko tomorrow morning.
Now Jeff has a judge weighed in on this latest request from Moscow on this latest information about the separation agreement and if not what are we going to hear from her. Well the judge has allowed Mr. Musk to amend his counterclaims in the case to add the whistleblower's allegations. I want to point out that the seven million dollar payment may be contractual.
We do not know if this was per a severance agreement with Mr. Zack. So I wouldn't automatically recoil at the 7 million dollar number. We still need to find out what that's all about. I doubt we're going to learn that
tomorrow either. So how are you expecting this testimony from that CO tomorrow to be folded into the case. That of course is building up to this trial coming up in mid-October.
Jeff here's his testimony tomorrow about the national security staff and potential spies within Twitter's employee group. Are the things that the senators are going to be focusing on the folks that we're concerned about is going to be his his allegation that he raised the question about how many spam and robot accounts were embedded within the customer base and the Twitter his colleagues lack of interest in finding that out. That's the key question in the trial coming up because that's where Mr. Musk has put all his chips in terms of defense arguments. Well clearly both parties could be watching this testimony with bated breath. Alex any word from Twitter about the
latest salvo or how any of this potentially changes their plans. So they basically came out and said look we don't buy the argument that the separation agreement is a viable excuse. I know that the Twitter camp will also be watching this very closely as well. A lot of the shareholders who are potentially making their voices heard in the shareholder vote tomorrow I would think if things go really far down the line of privacy concerns. If there is a lot of kind of interest in the data security piece that are unrelated to the acquisition that would just be another thing to add to the list of Twitter. CEO is kind of big ticket items to care about. Twitter has not been brought into D.C.
as often as a lot of the larger social media peers. So I think internally you could argue there's a lot of distractions going on at the company right now. And if they do get some traction in terms of legislators arguments that data privacy should be more important than Emily. I would add that to the list of kind of some of these ancillary concerns that are outside of just operating the business. All right.
Alex Brink. Jeff Feeley continuing to cover this evolving legal drama for us. Thank you both for joining us. Meantime a story that we continue to watch. Intel is scaling back expectations for its mobile IPO. According to Bloomberg sources the move could delay the share sale until next year if market conditions don't improve. Intel expects the IPO to value the self-driving tech business at as much as 30 billion dollars.
Reuters and others reported earlier potential valuations of more than 50 billion dollars. All right. Coming up how Amazon and other streaming diets are disrupting one of the bastions of traditional television. That is sports broadcasting rights. A top Amazon executive with us next. This is Bloomberg. It is a historic week for sports broadcasting. This Thursday Amazon Prime video kicks off an 11 year 13 billion dollar deal. This is the first time a streaming service has had exclusive rights to NFL games in the United States. And a big challenge to major networks.
Amazon told advertisers it expects an average audience of twelve point six million viewers per game. This according to The Wall Street Journal. Vice president of Amazon Global Sports Video Marie Donohue is the architect of Amazon's live sports ambitions and she joins us now to discuss. So a huge week Marie for Amazon. And for the first time fans are going to have to log onto Amazon Prime video to see this big game on Thursday night. Does this seem like a turning point to you in sports broadcasting. Absolutely. I mean I do look honestly I think this will be as big as when the NFL went to cable back in nineteen eighty seven. You know we know how NFL games
legitimized and grew the cable cable business and we think the same thing can happen for streaming. So you led negotiations for this 13 billion dollar eleven year deal. It is a massive deal. How did you convince the NFL that Amazon was the place to be.
Right. Well you know the NFL cares. Important cares a lot about scale and reach. And we've got that. We've got that better than any better or better than any other streaming service. They also care about production. And they knew we showed in Europe. And we also showed firework in the US that we can produce the best broadcast for fans.
It's incredibly important to them. And one of the most exciting things for me is they care about innovation. You know the NFL has been able to stay top of mind for sports fans for decades because they innovate and they move forward and they have that confidence. And that's the biggest. That was one of the biggest tenets in our deal with the NFL.
We agreed to push each other and to continue to push each other on innovating on behalf of sports fans. And it's something that's personally really exciting and something that really excites the team. What are your goals with audience numbers. I understand we've got this Wall Street Journal number that you're expecting twelve point six million viewers. Is that correct. I also understand the typical viewership is more like 16 and a half million.
Are you hoping or thinking that you can get there or bigger. Right. Well you know our number one focus is delivering the absolute best broadcast for fans and the trends are in our favor. Everyone knows that more and more fan
fans particularly sports fans are moving to streaming things. This won't happen overnight. This is an 11 year deal. But we feel really strongly that if we start with fans you serve the fans they will come. And so we're excited. We had our pre-season game two weeks ago and the reaction from fans was just fabulous. And we're really excited to get on the
field this Thursday. Thursday the charge Chargers taken on the Kansas City Chiefs. Talk to us then about how this benefits Amazon more broadly. You know what.
What's going to be your measure of success. Is it driving audience numbers. Is it driving more prime memberships. Is it getting more customers to buy more Amazon products. Yeah absolutely. So I hate to sound repetitive but at Amazon we start with customers I call them sports fans.
And so number one we think we can serve sports fans better we can serve customers better but we wouldn't be in this if we didn't think we could improve the experience and make it better for fans. But absolutely as you said Emily they're great business opportunities here. Number one prime time video is a membership service so we can attract more members to prime. There are plenty of people who are prime who maybe have don't even haven't streamed video on prime video. And then there are other folks who come in for Thursday night football and find things like Lord of the Rings. So we think particularly in the prime membership. Opportunity is huge.
We think that opportunity is huge for us. And you know we haven't even talked about advertising you know advertising. This is a game changer. You're for advertising for at Amazon. We have a very strong business already. But you can't beat this is the most premium video advertising inventory out there.
So it's a huge game changer for us in terms of advertising. So how do you plan to leverage targeted advertising and do some things differently that maybe a traditional network wouldn't be able to do given all of the data and other ways you have to reach your customers. All right. Well I would start with you know we've done a deal with Nielsen. So we we actually are the first streamer to do a deal with Nielsen. So we'll have ratings every week.
So we think that's really important because that is what advertisers and the industry followers or Nielsen ratings on top of that is. You say we have first party data and we'll use that data not only to measure our fans and to and to serve to serve them better but also to serve advertisers better. We can actually use that first party data to make the advertising more relevant more targeted and more directed. So it's an incredible opportunity. Now talk to us about the experience. Is there going to be a pregame show at halftime show sideline reporters. How is this going to be different than a
traditional network experience. Right. So first of all we start we start with the basics. We have the best broadcast. We think we will have the best game
broadcast in the business. I mean we're I've been in sports 20 years and you always have to remember it starts and ends with the game. So we've got iconic broadcasters like Al Michaels and Kirk Herb Street. We've got Kelly Hartung on the sidelines. This will be the absolute broadcast. We've got more cameras than anybody.
So when you turn on your big screen television or whatever device we're every piece of glass whatever you watch the game you can sit back and relax and enjoy that huge big screen experience. But on top of that as you mentioned Emily we're no t service. So we're not satisfied with that. The bar for us is really high. We want to innovate. So we're going to offer all sorts of innovation and custom customized experience for fans. We'll have alternate feeds.
You can watch the game. You can sit down and watch with your family. Watch the dude's dude. Perfect. Or you can go.
You can do it. You can explore our x ray upper experience which is actually without ever leaving the game. You can see all sorts of data and statistics and replays.
The point of x rays actually to put the tools that normally you have to wait for a producer or a director to say oh let me see that replay. Let me show you some extra stats. We're going to put that in the hands of fans. And then of course we have all the content around the game. So we have pre game post game. We'll have a great late night show. And we've got the best the best talent in the business there. We've got Carissa Thompson.
We've got Hall of Famer Tony Gonzalez. We've got two guys right off the field Richard Sherman and rides Fitzpatrick. They're going to be amazing the conversation. These guys have they were on the field
with these guys just last year. So they'll take fans literally inside the thinking of the players on the field. We've got a great surrounding cast and then we've got we're also going to offer the game and the programming on Twitch. Remember we have Twitch which is an incredibly young incredibly young interactive audience. And you know Twitch is all about watching with your community. So we're excited. We're going to expand the communal
nature of sports through Twitch. And then on top of that we've got some shows during the rest of the week. So we are going to surround fans all week. And as you can tell for my excitement we're just thrilled to get going. You know I assume you've got some contingency plans you know. Are you sure all cable fans are gonna be
able to find the game. Are you planning for any kind of onboarding issues or an onslaught of onboarding issues potentially. Absolutely. So we're on every piece of glass as I
mentioned. And if you come to any Amazon service you're not going to be able to miss this game and it'll be seamless and it will be easy. But also we've got great third party marketing to to also help you. But of course we're prepared. We've done this in Europe. We've done this in other places in the
US. We actually have all sorts of online tools. We're old school. We also have phone numbers you can call and we actually put extra people on hand because we know that it's incredibly frustrating when you call them.
Sometimes when you call the services and you don't get an answer we will have literally thousands of people ready to take those phone calls if needed. So we're incredibly excited. We've been preparing for this for years. This is really hard work. And it's really complicated. And we've been building at it building towards it for years. We think we're the company in the back. We know other companies and position to serve a game like this to a concurrent concurrent audience like we're going to experience the season. So the big question of course then is
what next is Amazon planning to bid on any of the remaining college sports rights or the NBA. What else do you have coming. Well obviously I can't talk about specifics but what I can tell you Emily is we approach everything from the sports fan perspective. So the first thing we do is we say how do fans consume this content. Is there a way we can do better. Is the way we can serve those fans
better. And of course then what can we do differently and does it make sense for us. So there's literally I can't really think of any sports rights we don't look at. I mean we're in business with the NFL. We're in business with the Yankees. We provide local games exclusively in New York. So we're excited the partners are willing to come with us are the ones who are forward focused fan focus and really want to go. You know Wayne Gretzky you want to go
where the puck is going not where it's been. So last quick question I know you used to work at ESPN. Amazon has a huge content budget. I wonder if you're also thinking about making news sports content. You know I believe you are involved in
the 30 for 30 series you know and maybe original sports documentaries and other ways that you can build out Amazon as a big player in where you go to see things about sports. Absolutely. So we've already started that Emily. We've got a series all or nothing that we've done in the US and Europe. We've got great great success with that.
And actually five months ago we started a separate sports group in my group were hiring or staffing up if anybody any young filmmakers out there want to come work with us. So we're excited. We think when you have those that additional content not only is it valuable on its own we have a high bar. We want it to be excellent content. But it also engages fans more with the athletes and the teams that than we show on live events. It's a really great ecosystem to get
going. And we found that in Europe when we have our all or nothing is on the Premier League teams we notice that those fans understand and appreciate those players in those teams even more when they understand what they've gone through and seen behind this and seen behind the scenes. All right. Marie Donahue I believe I got you got to catch a flight to Kansas City.
So thank you so much for joining us. Amazon Global Sports Video vice president and excited to see how it all shakes out. On Thursday. We're going to be right back.
This is Bloomberg. Early indicators suggest Apple's iPhone 14 pre orders are stronger than expected pre order data showing that the iPhone 14 pro max is the best selling model and orders for the iPhone 14 are tracking slightly ahead of the iPhone 13. Wedbush saying seeing strong demand trends and estimates 240 million of the 1 billion total iPhone users have an upgrade to their phones in nearly four years. Apple shares popping on the news the
most since coming up. Micron breaking ground on a new fab in Idaho. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra with us next. Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology I'm Emily Chang in San Francisco.
Trevor Milton the founder and former executive chair of Nicola went on trial starting this week charged with lying about the company's products to mislead investors and prop up the stock. Let's get back to New York and Bloomberg's at Ludlow who was in court today for the first stages. Ed what happened. Yes a tribute. Milton faces two counts of securities fraud two counts of wire fraud.
And you're right. And that prosecutors have to prove that a Trevor Milton lied about the company's technology and its products. And in so doing he misled investors. And also therefore the investors made
the choice to invest in his company Nicola. Based on that information he arrived Monday morning Southern District of New York here in Manhattan for the trial which was supposed take place in June and July. But Judge Gordo Ramos granted the delay until September 12th Monday so that they could take on that fourth count of wire fraud. It's a five week trial. We started Monday with jury selection. Tuesday we expect opening arguments with
the prosecution having around three weeks present their evidence and then the defense will come in. And the burden of proof is on the prosecution here. This trial could run for around five weeks through the end of October. And as I say the focus for the prosecution is convincing the jury that a Trevor Milton lied misled investors about the company's progress its technology what it had actually achieved. But also the investors retail investors
in particular were moved or motivated to invest in the stock for that reason. You remember at its peak this was the poster child of the 2021 back wave of evil companies went public virus back. And at one point it had a market cap rates and and forward things are very different now in. All right. At Ludlow thank you. We'll continue to wait for your updates as the trial progresses.
Meantime Micron just broke ground on a new memory manufacturing fab in Boise Idaho. The first of its kind in the U.S. in 20 years. The chip maker plans to invest roughly 15 billion dollars on the plan over the next several years making it the largest private investment ever made in the state. I caught up with Micron CEO syndrome a road trip in an exclusive interview earlier. Take a listen to what he had to say. We have been doing research and development technology leader from Boise for decades and now being able to combine that leading edge memory manufacturing technology.
This will just accelerate time to market of new technologies new solutions for the benefit of the customers as well as of course driving US leadership in semiconductor technology. So this is a big day. This is a big announcement. And this is enabled by chipset which was just signed by President Biden a month ago because that is really important in terms of leveling the playing field. So this is very exciting is being 17000 jobs here in Idaho over the course of the rest of the decade. We will be starting production sometime in 2025.
Of course construction to start sometime in 2023. And this will be transformative. And we'll be bringing on production of robots in line with the industry's demand. Now Micron of course already has many plants across Asia. How does this impact operations globally.
Does this mean you'll always consider building in the US first. Of course we have as you noted very diversified footprint across Asia for our manufacturing and again Chips Act now enables the levelling the playing field thereby now the production can become cost effective with the support of grants from chips and investment tax credits. So of course we will continue to invest in other plants in Asia as well. But then we look at the demand for memory by 2030 timeframe.
Semiconductor memory demand is expected to double in terms of revenue opportunity. That requires new view for capacity. That's why we started this plant here announced this plant here and actually had the ceremony that launches the construction for this plant. And this will basically enable us this will basically enable us to meet the growing demand for the 2030 era for many semiconductor memory technology. Of course we'll keep investing in technology transitions in our overseas plants as well. Is the money that's been set aside by
the US government enough. Others have called it a start. That's right. It's a good start. And the support in terms of chips grants as well as investment tax credits will help us level the playing field with foreign governments which have been supporting investments in semiconductors in their countries for a very long time.
Of course companies like Micron will continue to invest from their operating cash flow as well as from the balance sheet. And of course a big part of the investments will come from Micron but the chips grants are absolutely essential. Without chips we would not have been able to make this investment. This announcement today. Do you have any concerns that its governments and not market forces setting the agenda for what is needed and that that could down the line create excess capacity.
It is extremely important as that and as I noted earlier that we will be bringing on production in the future in line with the industry demand projections. The end market demand projections. And of course each of the companies that is bringing their own semiconductor production up will be managing should be managing. And I can speak for Micron. We will of course be managing discipline our supply growth keeping an eye on demand growth and keeping them balanced to the best of our abilities. Now you and Micron warned about slowing demand about a month ago which triggered a broader concern about a slump across the chip industry overall.
What can you tell us about demand as you see it now. Is it indeed slowing down. And if so how much. This is for the memory industry for the semiconductor industry. This is a challenging environment primarily driven by mentally adjustments that our customers across various end markets are making.
And that's really impacting the industry demand and supply balance. Of course we have taken actions in this regard in terms of adjusting our supply growth plans for the future. But you know Emily very well that in semiconductors actions taken it takes a while before the results are achieved. So it will take us a few quarters before I believe industry demand and supply and balance will be restored. But what's important here is what we are announcing today is about the long term future the demand drivers for long terms in a 5G autonomous. And of course across data center industrial automotive those demand drivers in terms of consumption of memory requirements for the long term are intact.
And that's why to meet that growing demand requirement of the future investments need to be made now because there's a long lead time to build these fabs. And the production will only start in the second half of this decade. And it will of course be managed in line with the demand projections for the future. So clearly a huge step for Micron. Breaking ground on this fab today. I'm curious what you think this means for the broader industry though if demand is slowing or at least for a few quarters as you say.
How long do you think we could be in a cycle of oversupply. You know not just where Micron is concerned but across the broader chip industry. Look mentally it just means take a while to work through the system and I can tell you that memory industry tends to be cyclical. But what's important is that the health of the memory industry is really ultimately driven by long term demand trends. And I think that's important that as you know near-term perturbations take place due to factors such as inventory adjustments. Actions are taken fast to bring demand and supply and balance. But of course it takes a while.
It takes few quarters for that demand supply to get in balance. But the important thing is that actions are taken fast. We are being responsive in that regard but we are also managing for the long haul. The longer the long haul in terms of the growing demand needing more investments in order to meet the requirements of our customers as we look ahead to the second half of this decade. There's of course been a lot of talk about the competition between the US and China on this front. Just how big is China in the memory market in particular and is it something that the US government should be concerned about. So there are Chinese companies with the
support of the Chinese government that have been making certain progress with respect to the memory and of course you know these are taken into account when we look at overall industry supply and the industry supply growth expectations of the future. And what we are here doing at Micron is continuing to stay ahead in terms of the technology capability. Of course we always want a level playing field and of course respect for intellectual property. But we have to continue to drive our own technology roadmap today. Emily Micron is a leader global leader in Semiconductor DINO as well as NAND technology.
And this is where late from here in Boise the teams that have produced tremendous amount of innovation that in the future will be able to combine with bringing into manufacturing right here as well. These are all chips act enabled activities that actually ultimately help secure the national security of the U.S. as well by having manufacturing of critical infrastructure needs the chips being made here in the future in the semiconductor industry.
Micron CEO Sanjay Roach out there. All right. Coming up the future of sports. Could it be teams. We're gonna talk about that with so rare CEO Ryan Spoon next. This is Bloomberg. We still have some work to do. I know security being a big big part of
that. You've seen some of the cyber security best make investing going way good in the grand scheme. And you look at the pieces the block chain and tease out your work.
It definitely gives the athlete opportunity to go directly to his fan base. It gives the fan you know insights. That's a lot different. And it's essentially cutting out the middle man. That was NBA champion and investor Andre Iguodala speaking about the intersection of sports and NFL teams. Let's dive deeper into this conversation in our crypt. Our report now with fantasy sports and block chain company.
So rare. Which is backed by among others tennis great Serena Williams. The company has already inked partnerships with Major League Soccer and Major League Baseball and is now adding the NBA with the first free to play fantasy game based on digital cards. So where C O Ryan Spoon joins us now for more on this deal. So talk to us Ryan about how this
partnership with the NBA came together. First thanks for having me. It came together it's just a very natural evolution. You heard Andre talk there about the importance of the opportunities that block chain enables. We all know I spent years at ESPN on the digital side. How important and fun and how fast growing fantasy is. We know that on the collectible side.
So when you tie fantasy and collectibles with the block chain on a global scale the NBA is a perfect perfect product and partner. And it's our third launch as you mentioned. We have a big global soccer global football game and community that's been very successful. A couple months ago we announced and
then launched our MLB partnership. And so we're MLB and we're super excited to be doing this with the NBA right up around the upcoming season launch. This puts you in competition with NBA top shot.
How do your platforms stack up. So we are very specifically focused on NFTE based games. So players collect their cards. You come in and everyone once you register you get a free set of cards.
And with those cards you play the game in the game that you're managing the cards. So like a fantasy draft. But instead of ESPN who I know and love and spend time this weekend doing my my fantasy drafts here the player has the agency to pick and manage his or her roster. As you do that you end up collecting cards as rewards. That's very different. I have admiration for top I've admiration and I'm a user of a lot of other platforms. But in our space the fantasy based games
we are the leader. And these relationships are also you know this is the lane that we are exclusively focused on and we think we have demonstrated real leadership in. Now you've launched soccer and baseball NFTE projects previously no surprise Aaron judge and show here Tony are the most used cards. What kind of traction have you seen. So soccer soccer has obviously a large runway. It is very successful is very large community behind it.
Obviously it's a global game. The user base on our side is global. The traction is global. And when I say geographically diverse it really is from all segments of the world. We closed last year and we still believe we're in early days.
We closed last year doing three hundred and twenty five million in card sales on the platform. We exceeded that in the first two quarters of the year. And now you begin to introduce an OBE. We did that end of July. The traction there has been really
positive and encouraging. Also a global footprint which we think is important. Baseball is a really excellent product here and sport because of the stats based nature the movement the surprise.
And NBA is going to be fantastic. We all know how important the stars are and the players. And for what it is worth noting our deal on the NBA side is with both the NBA and the NBA.
So these are licensed player driven cards. And I also think it's worth noting that MLB is biggest day on the platform was when we announced NBA last week. And so that's a really important example of how we think all these sports can fit together how the global nature of these games hopefully works together. And this concept of being able to collect a Johnny's card or a Mike Trout or killing him Bob they do that across the entire platform. That's a really big exciting idea. All right. Good stuff. Fry and spoon see. Oh so rare.
Well Andre Iguodala is excited about it. That should get some folks excited. Thanks Ryan so much for joining. Thank you. Yeah. All right. Coming up Blue Origin's aborted rocket launch. We're gonna have all the details on what went wrong and what happens next. This is Bloomberg.
Blue Origin aborted a launch of its sub orbital New Shepard rocket. Moments after takeoff. This happened in West Texas and it is the first major failure for Jeff Bezos his company in several years. Bloomberg Surveillance joins us now from Austin with more details.
So Lauren what happened. Well we actually don't have a lot of details at the moment. Basically all we know is what we saw on the livestream of the launch today. This was a pretty regular routine launch for Blue Origin. They were launching research payloads
many of which were funded by NASA. No people were on board thankfully but it was meant to be a pretty regular launch for them sending these payloads to space and back. And then sometime a little after a minute into the launch something seemed to go wrong with the engine and it triggered the abort escape system for the capsule. How significant is a failure like this in what would have been a pretty routine launch. I think Floridians got really lucky
today because there was no people on board. I they have a pretty good track record when it comes to their their flights. They only really suffer or suffered one partial failure really early in their testing regime. So this is the first time in pretty much
all of New Shepherd's history that they've had a major failure like this. So I think it's probably going to be a while before we see New Shepard fly again. So what is next here. You know when something like this happens a significant failure like this you go back to the drawing board you know can years pass potentially as we've seen with NASA before someone else before they they should they try to attempt this once again. Yeah it really depends on the source of the failure of the FAA already said today that they're going to be looking into this. Fortunately no one was hurt today. And the booster that you saw break away from that capsule fell into a hazard a designated hazard zone.
So ultimately everyone is safe. But yes the FAA said they will look into it and a shepherd won't fly again until they get to the root of the problem. And it really like I said that depends on what the source of the issue is with these commercial companies. They can be a little bit more nimble when it comes to return to flight. We've seen space X return of flight pretty quickly after some anomalies in the past.
And so maybe it could be similar from Blue Origin. We just can't say for sure because we really don't know what caused it. Can you put this in the context of Blue Origin's broader ambitions. Of course. I was there the day Jeff Bezos went into
space. They have sent other folks up there celebrities up up there. You know talk to us about how this fits into the broader and longer term plans. You know of course he's talked about this space colony and more.
Well I think it might be a tad worrying for her folks who might have a ticket to fly with Blue Origin. You know this. This was a rocket science specifically geared toward launching payloads but it is essentially the same rocket that they used to send people to the edge of space and back. However some comfort can be had in the fact that it kind of worked as intended. This an in-flight abort system. Basically what you saw is as soon as the system detected there was a problem with the rocket motors fired on the bottom of the capsule and immediately separated the capsule from the rocket and not landed safely in the desert. So presumably if there had been people on board they would have been just fine and would have landed safely. I can't say for sure. And thankfully there weren't any people onboard.
But the system did seem to work as designed. So there is some comfort in that. But you know I might I'm if I had a ticket I might be a little nervous in the future. Ah. Point taken.
All right. Lauren Graff who covers space for us. Thank you so much for that update. And that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology Tuesday. Melinda Gates will be joining us to talk about her foundation's efforts to fight poverty and gender gaps. And don't forget to check out our podcast where you get your podcast. Emily Chang in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg.
2022-09-13 11:46
