The current tit-for-tat between the NBA and Warner Bros. Discovery makes Lucille Bluth and Lucille Austero look sweet. Both entities, along with other media giants, are locked in an old-fashioned TV bidding war over the league’s lucrative new contract.

Currently, ESPN (owned by Disney) and TNT Sports, which is responsible for the live sports programming on TNT (owned by Warner Bros. Discovery), are wrapping up an NBA licensing deal that started with the 2016–17 season and lasts through April 2025. It’s rumored to be worth ~$2.6 billion/year for the NBA, with WBD forking over $1.2 billion annually.

But WBD is le tired. The company has more than $40 billion in debt. In 2022, while on a cost-cutting spree, CEO David Zaslav cavalierly said, “We don’t have to have the NBA” at an investor meeting, and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver took that personally.

In its new agreement, the NBA cut off its old friend and found some new ones:

• ESPN will be paying $2.8 billion a year for the “A” package, which includes the NBA Finals.
• NBC will plunk down $2.6 billion to get the “B” package that TNT currently has. It will get to broadcast the All-Star Game.
• Package “C” at $1.8 billion is earmarked for Amazon, which will get a conference final every other year.

Down but not out: WBD said it will exercise a “matching rights provision” in its current contract, which in theory allows it to pay the NBA the same amount for one of the three packages that a new partner would. It’s reportedly going after the cheapest option—Amazon’s.

Live sports still make money. An analyst told MarketWatch that WBD will lose $600 million in annual profit if it loses NBA games. But the NBA would prefer to work with Amazon: Prime Video is in 200+ million homes compared with TNT, which is in 89 million, according to Sports Illustrated. A lawsuit will likely determine if that discrepancy invalidates TNT’s right to match.—HVL

When someone launches themselves into space on their own rocket, they know a thing or two about flight. That's why it’s no surprise that Jeff Bezos wanted to fly LIFT Aircraft's HEXA (pictured above with LIFT CEO Matt Chasen).

HEXA is a personal eVTOL aircraft that’s FAA-approved to fly without a pilot's license. LIFT was the first in the world to launch commercial eVTOL operations—earning worldwide media coverage, including Anderson Cooper flying on 60 Minutes, the first live eVTOL flight on GMA, and a feature on the Today show.

Over 3,500 people, including top-tier VCs and multiple billionaires, have already invested $22m+ in LIFT. For a limited time, you can invest alongside them here.

Secret Service head Kimberly Cheatle resigned. Just one day after enduring a bipartisan grilling on Capitol Hill over the security failures that allowed for the assassination attempt on former President Trump, Cheatle stepped down, writing in an email to Secret Service employees that she didn’t want the chorus of criticism to be a distraction. She admitted that the agency “fell short” of its mission to protect US leaders when a gunman managed to fire several shots at Trump and spectators from a nearby roof at a July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Democrats and Republicans in Congress are now launching a bipartisan task force to investigate the assassination attempt.

Zuck’s coming for OpenAI with Meta’s biggest AI model yet. Meta yesterday unveiled Llama 3.1, a powerful new artificial intelligence model that CEO Mark Zuckerberg boasted is “state of the art.” The model, which like previous versions is free to the public, comes with improved reasoning and can instantly synthesize an entire book, Bloomberg reported. The model also includes a new feature that can use photos of a person to create images from prompts like “Imagine me with tattoos.” Zuckerberg said Llama cost hundreds of millions of dollars to train, and successive models will likely cost even more as they get stronger.

🚙 Tesla continued to ride the struggle bus. Profit at Elon Musk’s automaker failed to meet Wall Street’s expectations and fell for the second straight quarter as it tries to power through a period of weaker demand. The company also said 2024 growth will be “notably slower” than before, in part due to increased competition from rivals like China’s BYD. Meanwhile, Tesla plans to move ahead with a number of new ventures, including artificial intelligence, a robotaxi, and humanoid robots.

As the old adage goes, what makes you unique could also be what makes you pay more for a Ninja CREAMi…and if so, the FTC wants to find out. The agency announced yesterday that it’s investigating if and how companies use AI to target consumers with individualized pricing based on their personal data, a tactic known as surveillance pricing.

The FTC issued civil subpoenas to eight companies in financial services and consulting—including Mastercard, JPMorgan, and McKinsey—that advertise targeted pricing products to clients like Starbucks, McDonald’s, Home Depot, and Kirkland’s.

While it’s not accusing any of the companies of wrongdoing, the agency says it’s trying to find out what these pricing products are, what data they collect, who uses them, and how this affects prices. The FTC wants to know if, for example, you’re charged more for cheddar cheese because an algorithm figured out that you’re really into fondue.

Sound familiar? Surveillance pricing is a cousin of dynamic pricing, which has been used by airlines and ride-hailing companies to charge customers higher prices when there’s higher demand. And, while adjusting prices for different customers is a common sales strategy, the FTC is concerned about the level of specificity—and opacity—involved in surveillance pricing.—CC

Rocketman gets a LIFT. It’s no surprise rocketeer and helicopter pilot Jeff Bezos wanted to fly LIFT’s HEXA, an FAA-approved eVTOL aircraft anyone can fly without a pilot's license. LIFT was first to launch commercial operations, as featured on 60 Minutes. Top VCs and billionaires have invested $22m+ in LIFT. For a limited time, you can invest in LIFT here.

Apple could be taking us back to 2006 when annoying calls were ended by snapping your cell phone shut. The glossy gadget purveyor is charging ahead with creating a flip phone that you can still be addicted to an iPhone that folds like a clam shell, according to The Information.

Rumors turn real

The more pocket-friendly flip iPhone is a concept that Geek Squad types have speculated about for years, but it now sounds like a concrete plan:

• Apple recently contacted suppliers in Asia about manufacturing components for an iPhone that would fold along its width, per The Information.
• The company also reportedly gave the new product an official code name, and was granted a patent for the foldable screen this month.

Plans could still change, but if they do proceed, Apple’s engineers would need to figure out how to avoid a crease on the screen and make the phone significantly thinner.

As with most of Apple’s product releases, a flip iPhone wouldn’t be the first foldable smartphone on the market: Samsung, Google, and Motorola have been selling them for years.

Looking ahead…experts expect foldable iPhones to drop no earlier than 2026.—SK

“Alexa, throw on some Dave Matthews Band, set my alarm for 6am, and pay us back for the $25 billion you owe us” could be something Amazon CEO Andy Jassy just yelled at his Echo speaker. According to the Wall Street Journal, Amazon’s Alexa-enabled smart home devices business, which it launched a decade ago, is a financial black hole. Between 2017 and 2021, Amazon lost $25b on devices, despite the 500+ million Alexa-enabled gadgets in use globally. The issue, it seems, is that consumers are not using the intentionally underpriced devices to buy more products through Amazon, as the e-commerce giant hoped they would. Instead, they’re telling the gizmos to check the weather and play “Crash Into Me”—helpful, but not monetizable. WSJ reports that Amazon is now working on a paid Alexa subscription service with new features.