If you can remember back to January, Microsoft shook up the gaming world when it agreed to buy Call of Duty-maker Activision Blizzard for $69 billion. If it goes through, it’d be Microsoft’s biggest acquisition and one of the 30 largest deals ever.

Key word: if. The FTC has been fretting over the antitrust implications of this deal and, in a meeting today, regulators could vote on whether to sue to block it from going through. The primary worry: Microsoft produces its own console, the Xbox, and if it were to also own Activision’s games, it could withhold those titles from competitors, such as Sony’s PlayStation.

Given the enormous popularity of Call of Duty, it would be a nightmare scenario for Sony to get frozen out of the franchise. The franchise has generated $30 billion in revenue on its own, and the most-recent release, Modern Warfare II, racked up more than $1 billion in sales in its first 10 days.

Microsoft wants to show it can play nice

Like an alien descending the stairs of a UFO, Microsoft says “We come in peace .” As part of its campaign to soothe regulators ahead of a potential vote, on Tuesday it announced an agreement with Nintendo to bring CoD to the Switch for 10 years. Microsoft said it made a similar offer to Sony that would make new CoD releases available on PlayStation, but it seems that Sony hasn’t checked voicemail yet..

With its charm offensive, Microsoft is attempting to placate regulators not just in the US, but also around the world. 16 governments have to greenlight its deal for Activision, and only a small minority has approved it so far.

Still, the biggest fight may be on Microsoft’s home turf. Under the Biden administration, regulators have gone full beast mode in trying to block mergers over antitrust concerns. So far during Biden’s term, the DOJ has sued to block eight mergers and the FTC has also sued to block eight. Over the same period of the Trump administration, the DOJ challenged one merger and the FTC five, per the NYT.—NF

Aaron Judge gives a negotiation master class. Before the start of the 2022 MLB regular season, Yankees slugger Aaron Judge turned down the team’s offer of $213.5 million over seven years, believing that he could increase his value. He was right: After mashing an AL-record 62 homers last season, Judge reportedly signed a deal with the Yankees worth $360 million over nine years—so he boosted his pay by $146.5 million. Judge will make $40 million a year, the highest average annual payout for a position player in MLB history.

Supreme Court doesn’t seem ready to toss the rulebook on federal elections. The high court heard oral arguments yesterday in a case over North Carolina’s electoral map that could dramatically reshape how federal elections are conducted. But it appeared that a majority of the justices probably won’t support a theory put forward by NC Republicans known as the “independent state legislature theory,” which would let state legislatures set election rules without the possibility of review by state courts.

Ex-Theranos president gets a longer sentence than Elizabeth Holmes. A federal judge sentenced Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, who was Holmes’s No. 2 at the failed blood-testing startup and is also her ex-boyfriend, to nearly 13 years in prison (Holmes got 11). Balwani and Holmes had pointed the finger at each other for the fraud at Theranos, which they built into a $10 billion company before it came out that the tech they were hyping simply didn’t work and was never going to.

Netflix took a break from quirky serial killer dramas to drop the first three episodes of its highly anticipated docuseries about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle this morning. The docuseries follows the couple from the early days of their relationship through the issues that ultimately led them to ditch the crown.

The formerly full-time royal couple is also hoping the series will serve as a cornerstone of their emerging media empire.

The project is the first to come out of the multiyear deal Harry and Meghan’s production company, Archewell Productions, inked with Netflix—a deal estimated to be worth ~$100 million. The couple has been mostly mum about what projects we can anticipate (Netflix quietly cut a planned animated series this summer).

But just days ago, previews for Harry & Meghan dropped, and like everything the pair does, the promos drew a big response. They also received immediate criticism for being misleading, since some photos used to depict overbearing paparazzi were of swarming photographers…at events the couple didn’t even attend.

It’s all falling into place. The first season of Markle’s podcast, Archetypes, just wrapped, an endeavor that is part of a three-year, $15 million–$18 million exclusive deal with Spotify. And the prince’s memoir, Spare, is somehow already on every holiday gift list, even though it won’t be released until January.—MM

The tin can. Bigger chunks of stuff. Getting wild with noodle shapes. That’s a full list of the innovations in the soup industry over most of the last ~125 years, and it’s not exactly a recipe for rapid growth. Yet Campbell Soup Company is boiling hot after announcing better than expected earnings yesterday.

The company revealed that organic sales (revenue outside of merger impacts) jumped 15% from the year prior, beating estimates, and that consumers responded better to inflation-based price hikes than anticipated. The soup stock (not the liquid) hit 52-week highs on the news. It’s up about 28% year to date, while the S&P 500 is down ~18%. So what’s going on with soup?

It’s the future

Cheap, long-lasting foods tend to do better in economic downturns. But Campbell’s didn’t find success just by waiting for inflation to hit: Since 2019, the company has been fully leaning into innovation, using AI to comb through 300 billion data points every year in search of new product ideas.

Campbell’s has also upended the way its employees work, shrinking soup lab space to encourage more collaboration.

Looking ahead…the company is planning a fourth wave of price hikes, betting that consumers will keep coming back for more soup.—MK

Stat: Elon Musk was briefly dethroned as the world’s richest person for the first time since September 2021, after a drop in Tesla’s share price yesterday caused him to fall below LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires list (which updates every five minutes). Musk remains “which of my jets should I take today?” loaded, with more than $185 billion in net worth, but his fortune has taken a ~$70 billion hit since he offered to pay $44 billion to make Twitter’s problems his own—mostly because Tesla stock is down about 50% this year.

Quote: “It was too expensive from the beginning…that’s front of the soccer jersey level prices.”

Taylor Swift’s tour might be stuck in an unfortunate relationship with Ticketmaster, but the singer reportedly managed to dodge a deal with an even less popular partner. According to the Financial Times, the star’s team made it to late-stage negotiations with FTX for a $100 million sponsorship—apparently celebrity-happy FTX wanted to get involved because ex-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is “a fan of Tay Tay.” Luckily for everyone’s favorite anti-hero, she didn't end up associated with the brand because talks broke down a few months before FTX blew up. The price tag for keeping Swift bejeweled on tour was reportedly too high for the crypto exchange.

Read: Secrets of the Christmas tree trade. (Curbed)

Feeling apocalyptic? This game lets you launch an asteroid at Earth.

Rock, paper, scissors: Shoot.

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Three headlines and a lie

Three of these headlines are real and one is faker than women’s jeans sizes. Can you spot the odd one out?

1. Only 6 people showed up to the EU’s $400,000 party in the metaverse
2. Startup that laid off 20% of its workforce draws outrage for paying Dua Lipa $200k to perform at holiday party
3. Hospital patient arrested for allegedly switching off neighbor’s ‘noisy’ oxygen machine
4. Rogue wild turkeys led by ‘Kevin’ terrorize residents of Woburn, Massachusetts

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