Greggulator
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Posts posted by Greggulator
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1 minute ago, Technico Support said:
I guess I’m an idealist just wrapped in cynic clothes, but shit like this, hedge funds, venture capitalists, and really the stock market in general, just gross me out about my country. Just all these people making money but not producing anything of tangible value, just making money by making money all the way down while regular people can’t afford shit. It’s sickening.
Well, there is tangible value in a lot (if not most) cases. A private equity fund bought a company I used to work for. That gave the company a huge injection of cash. And then the company used that to hire a lot more people to grow. The company I used to work for wasn’t going to be able to do that on its own.
Venture Capital — that’s essentially a private equity fund, but it instead looks to buy stakes in companies that are just starting out. It’s riskier since it is really hard to start a company. But entrepreneurs need to get money to start and grow from somewhere.
There are certainly many other cases where things are not as rosy. I will write about some of those later. But it’s not a “blanket statement” thing where this is all bad or it is a perfectly run sysytem.
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9 minutes ago, Raziel said:
The people with said fund have to work for another 10 years while the guys that made the investment move on to the next one without a thought, care, or consequence.
See below. There are certainly criticisms to be made about how this all works, but one company in a private equity fund failing isn’t going to ruin a pension plan.
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15 minutes ago, Godfrey said:
What happens to the retirement funds if the investment is a loss?
So what happens is this:
There is a private equity fund and it raises $1 million. It puts in $100,000 of its own money. And then it gets nine investors (pensions, etc.) to each kick in $100,000. (All math is hypothetical math and it is more complicated in reality.)
The private equity fund takes that $1 million and will use it to buy 5 companies at $200,000 a pop. Maybe they are able to sell all five for $400,000 each later on for a total $2 million. Then the proceeds are split between the investors (pensions, etc.) and each investor did well with returns (they put up $100,000 and got $400K back.)
But maybe what happens (and it can happen) is they will have four successful “exits” (when you sell a company) but one company will be a bust and goes out of business.
So what happens is that the fund made $1.6 million instead of $2 million.
Think of it like this: Silver Lake raised $20 billion for its 15th private equity fund — think of it as an Easter basket. They will buy probably 10 companies with that $20 billion — each one an Easter egg. Endeavor will be one of those 10 Easter eggs. Maybe one egg will break. But will all 10?
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This is what I write about professionally. I am sleep deprived so bare with me if I mix anything up.
There is something called a private equity fund. Basically, a private equity firm says: “We would like to raise, say, $1 billion. We will go out and ask investors for this money. But we do not mean the general public. We mean pension plans that manage money so teachers are firefighters can retire, college endowment funds, various charitable foundations and incredibly rich people. Then we will take the $1 billion we raise from these investors, buy privately held business, and hopefully sell them for a profit 5 to 7 or 10 years later and we will split those proceeds with our investors.” (Literally — I write about how pensions and endowments and etc. invest in private equity.)
Some of the bigger private equity managers you may have heard of are BlackRock and Apollo and KKR. And private equity is this incredible amount of the global economy. There are only 3,000 or so publicly traded (as you can own a portion of the company by buying shares of it on a stock exchange) and there are probably 3,000 privately held businesses within 10 miles of my house. Literally, private equity managers own trillions of dollars in assets (and are then indirectly held by government employees with a pension plan.)
Silver Lake is a really big private equity manager. They raised $20 billion for their last investment fund. Silver Lake largely focused on buying and selling technology and tech adjacent companies. (It’s all sort of nebulous.) Or they buy large stakes in these companies. The term used for these are “portfolio companies.” Silver Lake is or was a big investor in AirBnB and Expedia and SoFi and Twitter and Ancestry.Com and Skype and Dell Technologies and a lot of other companies. Silver Lake is really big time.
Silver Lake has branched out into sports and entertainment recently. They own/own large stakes in AMC and Fanatics and the Australian professional soccer league and Manchester City (and its sister teams around the globe.) They have also been buying assets from Endeavor like a bunch of minor league baseball teams before just deciding to buy Endeavor outright. (Which is today’s news.)
Endeavor was a publicly traded company (and still will be until all the technicalities of this sort of merger and acquisition are completed.) You can buy shares of Endeavor. At the same time, Endeavor owns 51 percent of TKO (WWE and UFC combined) and people like us can buy shares of TKO. (Endeavor is what is referred to as a parent company.)
Private equity firms do something called a “take private” where they will buy a publicly traded company (or like a division of a publicly traded company) and own all of almost all of its shares. Silver Lake just bought Endeavor and now owns it as a private company. But Endeavor still owns over half of the WWE.
So, what does this mean for the WWE? This from here is just speculation. Silver Lake has to sell Endeavor over the next few years (they are contractually obligated almost certainly) and give their share of the proceeds back to its investors (pension funds, college endowments, etc.) There are all kinds of technqiues private equity managers can use to hopefully make a company more profitable. Sometimes, they will put in place their own leadership team. Other times, they will use their own expertise to help a company they acquired grow the business. Or other times they will, say, lay off 25 percent of the company to “save expenses.”
In this case, it’s probably highly likely that Silver Lake will give Endeavor’s current leadership team some degree of autonomy in how they run the company. Ari Emmanuel is the Endeavor CEO and he’s a power broker in entertainment so Silver Lake is likely saying “Hey, Ari Emmanuel and your team. We bought your company because we like you, now go make us more money.” But there could easily be a time where Silver Lake does not like what Endeavor is doing and will decide to put their own people in place.
As far as TKO itself goes: Who really knows. No one who works in this space would Be surprised at all if Silver Lake was to buy TKO or the WWE separate from that. I have no insider knowledge of this — just that Silver Lake owns Endeavor, which owns just over half of TKO, so why wouldn’t Silver Lake just buy TKO outright? Or someone like Comcast or Disney could approach Silver Lake and say “hey, we really want to buy TKO” or even “We really just want to buy the WWE half of TKO.” None of that would really surprise anyone.
But Silver Lake now owns Endeavor. And it has to sell Endeavor at some point over the next 7-10 years so it can give money back to its investors so people who work for your state’s public works department can have a monthly check sent to them when they retire.
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Also, the product feels so different and fresh with the change in production. I never minded the Kevin Dunn stuff as much as everyone else. Producing live television is insanely hard, and there’s a benefit to doing things the same way in order to make it as easy to produce as possible. People always pointed out when a spot or a big moment was missed by the camera… because of how little that actually happened. It’s not like real sports has changed its production too much over the years.
But the WWE also has the benefit of being scripted. And that adds in flexibility. Just the simple “walk-and-talk” quick promos they do before matches or the video segments like the Sami/Gable and Drew funeral stuff is so fresh and fun. They also have been experimenting with long tracking shots. Some of that feels a bit too much — it’s such a show-off technique in film and TV since people want to bite from Goodfellas. But last night, they had a really good one where Seth did his interview walk-and-talk, Drew’s awesome cameo, with the camera then trailing him for his entrance (which was so rad to see up close with how he switched right into the orchestra bit) and then to the ring. It really added to the atmosphere and gave a sort of “here’s what Seth sees when he comes to the ring” appeal.
They really are being smart about how to do these segments and who they are doing them with. The first one I remember doing a taped segment with was the KCs — they were probably used to it in NXT and if it doesn’t work with your low-card babyface act, who cares? Now they are using Sami and Gable and it felt really natural coming from two of the high end performers who have some acting chops.
I have no memory of who did the first walk-and-talks but I remember Kofi and Xavier having some quick bangers before their matches with Imperium. You have two all-time greats who know to not miss their marks for the blocking and staging and can deliver really concise promos.
It’s all so fun to watch.
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Over 10 million people watched the game last night. That’s right what the men’s tournament did the past weekend — which has a giant head start on women’s hoops, has huge interest because of (gross) gambling, and featured a bunch of blue bloods that always attract eyeballs.
It’s so awesome to see this unfolding. Women’s basketball is a really great product, even beyond Caitlyn Clark or South Carolina. It obviously can’t generate that at-the-rim highlights of the men’s game. But the passing, ball movement, player movement and the like is just at the absolute highest level. They barely stop moving.
I describe elite women’s basketball as the absolute highest form of basketball that I am familiar with playing. I grew up playing basketball with some really good athletes — one kid was a walk-on at Providence (total douche), a few other kids who played other D-1 sports at least for a little bit. But I did not play with anyone who could dunk in-game. Maybe, at most, someone I knew could barely do a one-handed ”dunk” more like a finger roll after 15 attempts in a layup line. This is not to say that I could have ever competed with a women’s player even on a crappy junior college team. But, aesthetically, the women’s game is how 99 percent of the world actually plays basketball and they are the absolute best at it.
Also: as stated before, I played daily with a kid who walked-on at Providence. He was more like a D2 level player if he wanted to actually play in games. That is still impressive. (Even though he is one of the biggest tool bags I have ever met in my life.)
He was NOT the best player in my neighborhood. The best player was my friend Patty. She balled out. She frequently beat the kid mentioned above one-on-one. She was also a starter for one of the top girls high school teams in New Jersey at the time as a freshman and sophomore. She was getting early recruiting letters from Top 25 teams. We were playing 3 on 3 and someone we were playing (another girl who was decent but not nearly as good) against took a cheap shot when Patty went up for a layup, and Patty came down and tore her ACL. Me and my other friend walked her home. She missed about a year and had to regain her athleticism right when recruiting really happens so the big schools didn’t give her any offers. She still ended up playing D1 (St. Peter’s) and is in their Hall of Fame. She was their leading scorer for two teams that made the NCAA tournament as a 16 seed, too. Awesome player and a really good friend when we were kids.
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The Bray Wyatt documentary is absolutely incredible. I don’t know if there is another wrestler whose work I have ever enjoyed more. Not everything was for me or for you, but we were really lucky to have a guy like Bray firing off all kinds of ideas and making a lot of them happen. You can tell how much he was liked and respected and enjoyed his time.
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4 minutes ago, Johnny Sorrow said:
Everything Sami/ Gable/ Gunther this show was fucking perfect.
Sami has acting chops. We saw it during The Bloodline stuff and even the comedy side with Knoxville. Would not surprise me if he ended up as a lovable goofball in a family comedy.
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Oh man, the final segment on RW was absolutely epic. I love a good heel whipping babyfaces angle. Rock and Roman properly laid in the lashing. Good on Seth and Cody for taking the beating. Great touch by Cody keeping his shirt on, because that got some crowd “noooo” murmurs when The Bloodline ripped the shirt off. Roman talking smack on the floor to the camera with the carnage in the background was so good. Only note was this had the opportunity for fans to pelt the ring with garbage like 90s nWo or a father trying to hop the railing since his kid was crying.
The Rock in 2024 just got a New York City crowd to chant “Rocky Suxks” less than a week from WrestleMania. So amazing.
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1 hour ago, TimLivingston said:
Jokic loves his game, which makes me think he’d angle to get him a shot in Denver. To see those two play together would be magical.
LSU/Iowa lived up to the hype and then some. We don’t deserve Caitlin and Angel, let alone in the same game. Near a 40-point triple double and a damn near 20/20 game? Outstanding.
Plus the comeuppance of Kim Mulkey!
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I am watching Raw in bits and pieces tonight. I just finished Richochet vs. Ivar. How many weeks this year has Ivar been involved in the best match on Raw? Because it has been many weeks. He is this secret awesome worker.
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Dear almighty were we treated to something tonight with Caitlyn Clark. What a great night for sports. My soon to be five-year-old son knows who she is and calls her Twenty Two and I am so glad that he gets to watch her during his formative sports fandom years.
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8 hours ago, Cobra Commander said:
I don’t know how long DJ Burns would hang around pro basketball. But for some weird reason, it wouldn’t shock me if he was coaching somewhere one day. As impossible as it would seem to predict current college basketball players future coaching prospects.
He reminds me a lot of Zach Randolph. I have been wrong so many times before but I could absolutely see DJ Burns as a bench guy for a playoff team next year.
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1 hour ago, RIPPA said:
There have been a few stories around for the past few years about A-Rod and his partner not having the money. Considering A-Rod does "financial freedom" seminars with Pitbull and has licensed out his name and the like with the scumbag who wrote "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" -- all stuff where you try and get people to pay money for these worthless rip-off classes -- I'm of the belief that A-Rod doesn't quite have the amount of money you need to buy a controlling share of a NBA franchise.
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Draymond just got ejected tonight. 3 minutes into the game for lipping off about a play he was not even involved in.
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My one wish is that we could get RIOT from the original WOW there...
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JJ and LeBron’s new podcast Mind The Game is incredible.
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On 3/25/2024 at 7:36 PM, Dolfan in NYC said:
Toronto's Jonay Porter is being held out of the lineup today because of "irregularities with prop bets" about him.
Incredibly funny scandal brewing. Massive betting on all the unders on his prop bets. Dude also has a subscription service to his Discord where you can get financial tips from him. Perfection.
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Also: The bridge is going to really make supply chains on the east coast interesting. Baltimore is the biggest hub of auto imports and exports and parts in the country, one of the biggest two terminals for coal exports, a port where we ship liquified natural gas out of, and a big intake for sugar. (The Domino Sugar refinery is a Baltimore landmark.)
One interesting thing about the Baltimore Port I did not know — it does not handle a lot of containers. It’s more of a “roll on and roll off” port.
I read a few places that it’s going to be a messy few days to try and reroute everything, but the rest of the east coast ports are big enough to handle the loads, but they might have some logistical issues to figure out because they handle container ships more. Plus, there will also have to be a lot more trucks rerouted from Baltimore to those ports.
An economist in an article I read said that the Baltimore bridge collapse meant America’s ocean shipping industry now essentially had no room for error in terms of capacity.
Also interesting — shipping insurance might not change too much. The stuff in the Red Sea already jacked up those rates, and the shipping insurance industry is more of a collective pool than how homeowner’s insurance or something like that works just to handle things like this.
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2 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:
We have some examples on the bullshit people are Tweeting out over in the Discord, but I got it straight from the horse's mouth today. I went to a local Chinese buffet for lunch and they had CNN playing on their TV set. An old lady eating (who somehow did so while talking to her friend non-stop the entire meal) piped up "I wonder what happened. The driver probably couldn't speak English."
This, in a restaurant owned and staffed by people who have English as a second language and definitely heard what you blurted out at full volume in a half-empty open-air room with nobody else talking.
Making it better — I don’t know if this 100 percent true since I saw it on social media somewhere. But it was mentioned that it’s required for local harbor pilots to steer vessels in and out of the harbor directly. I used to write about oil tankers — Baltimore doesn’t have an oil refinery, so I never wrote about that port specifically. But other ports have those kinds of requirements or something similar logistically.
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1 hour ago, The Natural said:
I hope you're okay, NikoBaltimore. Hoping there's no casualties. It's leading the news channels in the UK.
It’s a really important highway, too. I-95 is the big interstate along the east coast of America. It goes under Baltimore as a tunnel. There’s a “beltway” that is essentially a loop road around the city for vehicles too big for the tunnel/people who want to avoid city traffic and for locals in that area. That’s what the bridge is on. Going to be pretty disruptive for moving cargo around the US for a while.
The video is absolutely wild.
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Man, the Rock is a legitimate movie star being the single biggest asshole heel imaginable. Dude has absolutely nothing to gain from being in WrestleMania at all. It’s all downside risk for his career and real easy to see some studio exec taking a big role from him. The payday he’s getting from this is relatively nothing. Dwayne is just an artist and it is incredible.
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Man, that ending tonight was so so so so awesome. I loved that just a bit ago they had Cody come off the bus and tap his dog he has painted on it. Great foreshadowing they set up with that. Absolutely perfect that is was in the rain. Rock looked twisted as hell throughout. All-time heel show ending.
I was absolutely not into the Punk stuff. I love Drew in this current form. But it’s so corny when Punk reacts to comments like doing a three-count with his other hand. If you want played out shoot stuff to work, then everyone has to take the insults. Why do I care if Punk is going to do commentary for Rollins/Drew if he’s just going to be sarcastic and above it all? A bitter Punk calling a match between two of his biggest enemies is a good twist. Punk just no-selling insults like he’s Kevin Nash in the ring against La Parka in 1997 WCW is lame.
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I only got to see the Last Woman Standing match and that was a damn good garbage match brawl. Thought they did a good job at going from spot to spot and plunder to plunder. Nia has become a really good bully and Becky is at her best selling and selling and selling and then firing up. Loved that Becky had to use her resiliency to get the win (as highlighted by the announcers) and find a way to put Nia down after the Manhandle Slam through the table didn’t work. The leg drop from the ladder was pretty gnarly. Fun match.
April 2024 Wrestling Talk
in The PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING
Posted
That’s the idea behind it. You are diversifying and reducing your overall risk.