The WNBA playoffs tipped off yesterday, turning the page on a record-smashing regular season that could prove transformative for the league and signal a new era for women’s professional sports.

This spring, expectations were sky-high for the potential business boost provided by Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, LSU’s Angel Reese, and the rest of a star-studded rookie cast. It lived up to the hype and more.

Yesterday, Clark was selected as the unanimous Rookie of the Year. She wasn’t the best player in the league this season—that would be Las Vegas Aces center A’ja Wilson, who became just the second WNBA player in league history to be unanimously chosen as MVP.

But the Caitlin Clark Economic Effect was real, with her games for the Indiana Fever drawing huge TV ratings and selling out arenas around the country.

• 21 of the 24 WNBA broadcasts that topped 1 million viewers this season featured Clark, according to Sportico. Before this season, no WNBA broadcast had reached 1 million viewers since 2008.
• Average attendance at Fever games in Indianapolis was a league-record 17,035, a 319% jump from 4,067 last year.
• When the Fever played on the road, some home teams moved the games to NBA arenas to accommodate bigger crowds. Last Thursday, the Fever–Mystics matchup at Capital One Arena in Washington, DC, drew 20,711 fans, the largest crowd ever for a WNBA game.

But it’s not just Clark: Viewership and attendance were up across the board. ESPN said TV audiences for WNBA regular-season games increased 170% over last year. Ion said viewership jumped 133% annually, and 181% for men aged 25 to 54. Attendance for every team grew by double digits.

It’s starting to translate into $$$. In July, the WNBA signed a historic 11-year media rights deal worth a reported $2.2 billion, which goes into effect in 2026. The $200 million per year payout more than triples the $60 million under the current contract. But the leader of the players association said the new deal still undervalues the league, which has come under criticism for the low salaries of its star athletes.

Looking ahead: The WNBA playoffs will face fierce competition for eyeballs as it goes head-to-head with the NFL and other fall sports. But with Clark and the Fever in the mix (at least for the first round…they got throttled yesterday), expect more records to be broken.—NF

Considering an investment in crypto but looking to start small? How about starting with a Mini? A Grayscale Crypto Mini.

• Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust (ticker: BTC), offering exposure to Bitcoin
• Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust (ticker: ETH), offering exposure to Ether

^{The Trusts are not funds registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940 as amended (“1940 Act”) and are not subject to regulation under the 1940 act, unlike most exchange-traded products or ETFs. An investment in the Trusts is subject to a high degree of risk and heightened volatility. Digital assets are not suitable for an investor that cannot afford the loss of the entire investment.}

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• Mini commitment: You don’t need an entire Bitcoin or thousands of dollars’ worth of Ethereum to get crypto exposure—as exchange-traded products, BTC and ETH allow you to allocate as much or as little as you want to crypto.

Turns out, a Mini gets you a lot. Crypto investing begins with Grayscale. Learn more.

X could return to Brazil this week. Elon Musk’s social media company, X, said it has complied with court orders in Brazil, where it has been blocked from users for the last three weeks. In a filing on Friday night, X’s lawyers said it appointed a legal representative in Brazil, paid fines, and removed certain accounts from its platform, all steps that had been demanded by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes for X to keep operating in Brazil. The moves appear to be a capitulation by Musk to preserve X’s market share in the country as Brazilians flock to competitors Threads and Bluesky.

US warns Israel against all-out war vs. Hezbollah. Top brass in the Biden administration, including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby, said they have directly pushed Israel to seek diplomatic solutions to a conflict with Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon during a weekend of increased hostilities and fears of a wider ground war. A Hezbollah leader said an “open-ended battle of reckoning” has started, while the Israeli military’s chief of staff pledged that strikes on Hezbollah “will intensify” until it’s safe for displaced residents in northern Israel, who have fled rocket fire from Lebanon, to return home.

Motel 6 sold to Indian hotel company Oyo for $525 million. The all-cash purchase of the Blackstone-owned motel chain is Oyo’s latest push to expand its footprint in the US. Oyo, which calls itself a “startup” company and is backed by SoftBank, currently operates 320 hotels in 35 states, and Motel 6 and its Studio 6 offshoot have 1,500 locations in the US and Canada. In 2012, Blackstone paid $1.9 billion to buy Motel 6, whose name originally came from the company charging $6 in cash for a night’s stay (fun fact). The deal is expected to close by year’s end.

Cards Against Humanity filed a $15 million lawsuit against SpaceX for allegedly trespassing and damaging property the company owns in Texas.

That is not a Mad Libs.

How did the maker of a party game played by people who don’t want to have a conversation with each other and an aerospace company find themselves embroiled in litigation over land near the US–Mexico border? Like any great lawsuit, it started with a publicity stunt.

• CAH purchased a parcel in Brownsville, Texas, in 2017 to oppose then-President Trump’s plans to build a border wall.
• About 150,000 people donated $15 each (~$2.25 million total) to buy the land, which the company left in its natural state.

CAH alleges that SpaceX, which has grown its operations dramatically in remote southern Texas, turned the land into a work site and destroyed the vegetation without permission over the past six months. When SpaceX was made aware of the issue, CAH says the Elon Musk-led company made a “lowball offer for less than half our land’s value.”

If CAH wins its lawsuit, the company said it will split the money among the original donors, with each getting ~$100. That’s a nearly 700% ROI on a property where none of the money would have to go to realtor fees.—DL

A major boost to US lithium production. The US could be a global leader in lithium. One company’s helping realize that goal: EnergyX. They just announced a project backed by a $5m DOE grant that could produce 5x more lithium than today’s largest US plant. With demand growing 20x by 2040, it’s no surprise GM and 28,000+ others already invested. Invest in EnergyX by Oct. 3.

Yesterday marked the 30th anniversary of the debut of Friends, the television show that introduced an entire generation to the concept of rent control in New York City.

Love it or hate it, Friends remains a cultural force today despite going off the air in 2004. Netflix paid WarnerMedia $100 million in 2018 to stream the show in the US for one more year before it made its way to Max. Last year, Friends was the eighth-most streamed show at 25 billion minutes, per Nielsen, a jump attributed to the death of star Matthew Perry in October 2023. When the show began, the cast reportedly made $22,500 per episode; as of 2018, the main cast of six were making about $20 million each annually in syndication money.—DL

You already thought NYC was crowded, but here comes the UNGA: The 79th United Nations General Assembly is about to redefine the meaning of congestion in Manhattan. As more than 140 world leaders gather to hash out the world’s problems, New York is issuing gridlock alerts all week and asking drivers to find alternate modes of transportation to combat the numerous street closures that come with protecting the globe’s top brass. According to officials, the average speed of vehicles in midtown Manhattan during the UNGA is four miles per hour.

Smart glasses, headsets, and AI will take center stage at Meta Connect 2024: The two-day event that begins Wednesday in San Francisco will open with a keynote address from noted hydrofoiler Mark Zuckerberg, who will surely talk about how AI will make his products better. But what Meta announces regarding VR and AR could be the highlight: Analysts expect a cheaper version of the Meta Quest 3, along with updates to the popular Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and perhaps the unveiling of mixed-reality glasses dubbed “Orion” that can’t get a worse reception than Snap’s latest AR Spectacles.

The 50th season of Saturday Night Live begins: Emmy-winning Hacks star Jean Smart will host Saturday’s season premiere, with the Grammy-winning country singer Jelly Roll serving as the musical guest. The show is bringing back former cast member Maya Rudolph to portray Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris ahead of the election. The season will also welcome new cast members: Ashley Padilla, Emil Wakim, and Jane Wickline will replace Punkie Johnson, Molly Kearney, and Chloe Troast.

Everything else…

• Netflix’s docuseries Mr. McMahon drops on Wednesday and will focus on the reign of longtime WWE boss Vince McMahon, who is facing a lawsuit alleging abuse, sexual assault, and human trafficking.
• SpaceX will send a crew to the ISS on Thursday. Two empty seats on the spacecraft will be used to bring home marooned astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams in February.
• Megalopolis, the $120 million passion project of Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola that critics have labeled a “batsh*t crazy vision” and “visually dazzling,” gets a theatrical release Friday.