By Walt Hickey

Drone Shows

Using large swarms of drones to create intricate performances and displays in the sky is a rapidly growing business, reaching a valuation of $339 million in 2023. The Middle East has a disproportionately large market, accounting for $41 million of that value — the average show in the region costs $112,250 and utilizes an average of 401 drones. The money is good for those who get in on it, with a 76 percent increase in the number of pilots of unmanned vehicles in the UAE, which have applications in mapping and surveying as well.

Amar Diwakar, Rest of World

Othello

The hottest writer on Broadway is William Shakespeare, with the new production of Othello starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal breaking records during its previews. The show grossed $2.8 million last week, more than any non-musical has made in a single week on Broadway. While Hamilton notoriously charged $998 for the best seats during the holidays, Othello charges the eye-watering price of $921 for the first 14 rows in the center orchestra and the first 2 rows in the front mezzanine, which is pretty much unheard of. Its average ticket price during its first week of previews was $361.90, more than double the second-priciest show.

Michael Paulson, The New York Times

Brackets

Warren Buffett has long imparted a wager and probability lesson, offering $1 million in the Berkshire Hathaway company basketball tournament if any of them correctly call the first round of March Madness. This year he’s tweaking the odds — he’s getting old and wants to give someone a million dollars at some point — and announced that the prize will be awarded if an entrant picks the winners for at least 30 of the 32 first-round games. This could happen: in 2017, five entrants correctly predicted the winner of 31, only to miss out on the million by 1. In 2019, out of all the official brackets submitted in the NCAA’s contest, 3,080 chose correctly in 30 out of 32 cases. However, in the upset-heavy 2021 bracket, just one out of every 1,578,469 did.

Karen Langley, The Wall Street Journal

Graphic Novels

The data is in: while the sales of the top 20 graphic novels for adult readers were down 18 percent year over year, kids really cannot get enough of comics. Circana BookScan’s chart of the top 20 kids’ graphic novels in 2024 saw sales up 7 percent year over year. That said, one franchise really is responsible for this business: Dog Man by Dav Pilkey, the writer who accounted for 12 of the 20 entries on the list. The top-selling graphic novel of the year by far was Dog Man Vol 12: The Scarlet Shedder, which sold 1,273,926 copies. This was just over double the runner-up, Dog Man Vol. 13: Big Jim Begins, which sold 664,819 copies in the month of its release. That was followed by Cat Kid Comic Club 5: Influencers, Pilkey, Dog Man Vol. 11: Twenty Thousand Fleas Under The Sea and then at No. 5 The Baby-Sitters Club Vol. 15: Claudia and the Bad Joke, just one of two non-Pilkey comics in the top ten.

Brigid Alverson, ICV2

RTDs

Coca-Cola is continuing to run headlong into the alcohol business and will launch a vodka-based version of Minute Maid lemonade and pink lemonade with 5 percent ABV soon. This will expand the current batch of wine-based Minute Maid Spiked, which has included Blue Hawaiian and Strawberry Daiquiri flavors. Canned cocktails have been particularly successful lately when they actually contain spirits like vodka, not just ambiguous malt beverages with unclear alcohol origins. For instance, Surfside was the second best-selling canned cocktail with spirits last year, seeing 378 percent year-over-year growth. I, for one, look forward to when Coca-Cola just says screw it and returns to its origins — starting adding hard drugs to the soda again and selling it as a cure-all.

Chris Casey, Food Dive

Extended Stay

One interesting niche in the hotel business is dominated by Extended Stay America, a company that offers rooms at substantially cheaper prices than a typical hotel of their size, including kitchenettes for people working temporary jobs in new locations or undergoing life changes. Within the hotel industry, lots and lots of rivals are deeply envious of its success, and the likes of Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott and Wyndham have all attempted to replicate the business. One reason is that ESA’s 700 hotels require way less overhead than your typical hotel. Given the longer stays, rarer check-ins, higher occupancy (8 to 9 percentage points higher than usual) and ability to cut down turn-down service to a weekly basis, a standard 120-room location only needs 6 to 10 employees to operate, compared to hundreds at a comparably-sized full-service hotel.

Sean O’Neill, Skift

Lumon

The fictional corporation at the heart of the hit show Severance is Lumon Industries. As the show approaches the end of its second season and its popularity hits new highs, it’s become a pretty strange moment for the real-world companies that call themselves Lumen or Lumon. The show is successful enough that people visit the soulless filming location at the Bell Works complex in Holmdel, New Jersey, which is really saying something. Companies such as Lumen Technologies (a fiber-optic networking company in Louisiana), Lumen (which makes metabolic measurement devices) and Lumon Dental (a dentist near Detroit) have all been catching stray interest from fans of the program. A glazing company called Lumon even saw 200 job applications for a recently posted position in sales, about 4 times the usual volume.

Katie Deighton, The Wall Street Journal

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