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Numlock News: November 30, 2023 • Sailors, Ports, NASCAR

Nov 30

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By Walt Hickey

Somewhere, Beyond the Sea

SailGP, the United States sailing team on an international level, was sold to a consortium that included former Uber executives, a Milwaukee Bucks executive, and actress Issa Rae. This sale is the largest in the history of the sport, surpassing the $40 million that the United Kingdom’s Emirates GBR was valued at earlier this year. Historically the nation of Australia has dominated, and now, the chance is that the U.S. can find some way to compete.

Kim Bhasin, Bloomberg

Diet Coke

The average price of a 12-ounce can of Diet Coke in a package of 12 was 34 cents in 2018, a figure that rose to 56 cents per can in October 2023, a 65 percent increase. In general, prices have shot up: The price of a Diet Coke at a restaurant hopped up from $2.05 to $2.77, and what’s most interesting is that this trend includes non-diet options.

Emily Stewart, Vox

Temu

The price of a 30-second ad during this year’s Super Bowl ranges from $6 million to $7.2 million, and one repeat customer is Temu, a peculiar little Chinese e-commerce platform. The Super Bowl spending of China’s retailers — which, beyond Temu, also include Shein — has had an impact well beyond the big game. Temu is interesting, as it launched rather recently in September of 2022, and its terrible Super Bowl ad nevertheless led to 426,000 downloads.

Patrick Coffee, Wall Street Journal

A Pact Remembered

Listen! Young one, and hear me. The years will churn, and the Moon shall fade, the stars will spin and the Night, she will guide, and as certainly as the Sun plunges below the mountains to the West and the stars rise above the seas of the East, as long as nature proceeds as that which must, ought to, Ryan Seacrest will ink a three-year deal with iHeartMedia. Much as the birds fly south and the cold flows north, the seas flow out and the shore pulls in, Seacrest will secure 30 years as the voice of iHeart, and secure his hegemony as the suzerain of 102.7 KIIS-FM.

Lacey Rose, The Hollywood Reporter

Left Turns

NASCAR has finalized their 2024 season, securing $7.75 billion worth of media rights in a seven-year deal that will take the motorsport through 2031. NASCAR television ratings are down, yes: On average, 2.86 million people tune in for each race, down 5 percent compared to 2022. But it’s worth remembering, regardless of what your hipster friends insist upon, F1 by comparison averaged just 1.12 million views per race.

Anthony Crupi, Sportico

SwissPort

SwissPort is a company that was spun off from Switzerland’s airline, and has since become the company that serves as the cargo intermediary in hundreds of American airports. The aviation industry has, by and large, passed off most of its cargo-related efforts to third parties under private equity businesses. A study of OSHA data found that injuries in the aviation industry increased 17 percent between 2019 and 2022, and the companies that maintain that internal air commerce are responsible for a disproportionate amount of injuries.

Lee Harris, The American Prospect

Pyramid?

A new paper in the journal Archaeological Prospection published in October claimed that there’s a pyramid in Gunung Padang in Indonesia that may be as old as 27,000 years old. That is, to be clear, a very, very old pyramid. For perspective, the first, oldest Egyptian pyramid is 4,600 years old, which is very old indeed. The oldest known megalithic site in general, at Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, was built something like 11,000 years ago. So the notion that we’ve got something that is 27,000 years old is, not to put too fine a point on it, insane. People in the region of Indonesia are thought to have been in caves from 12,000 to 6,000 years ago, and in general there’s a whole lot of skepticism about the new pyramids.

Dyani Lewis, Nature

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