ABC

Summary

Slate Money: Episode "ABC" — December 7, 2019

Host: Felix Salmon (Axios)
Co-hosts: Emily Peck (HuffPost), Anna Shymansky (Breaking Views)

---

Episode Overview

This episode covers a range of significant business and finance stories from the week, with deep dives into the reshuffling at Google/Alphabet, Uber’s newly released safety report, and Silver Lake’s high-stakes investment in Manchester City Football Club. Through dynamic, candid discussion, the hosts analyze the broader implications for tech accountability, corporate transparency, and the intersection of sports, technology, and media.

---

1. Alphabet/Google's Leadership Shift (00:00–12:32)

Key Points

• Main News: Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin announce they are stepping down from day-to-day management at Alphabet, promoting Sundar Pichai to oversee both Google and its parent company.
• Corporate Structure:
  • Alphabet is intentionally confusing: it’s an umbrella holding company with many subsidiaries (Waymo, Calico, Fitbit, Nest, etc.), some of which are only distantly related to core Google products.
  • Despite stepping back, Larry and Sergey retain voting control via class B shares.
• Power and Accountability:
  • Sundar Pichai receives the title and responsibilities but little real voting power. (Felix: “Sundar is not exactly poor—he has $100 million worth of Alphabet shares, but his shares have, on average, 0.07 votes each.” [05:54])
  • Larry and Sergey maintain majority board control: "There is literally no way in which anyone can hold them accountable for anything that happens at Alphabet, despite the fact that they control the company." ([06:56])
• Techlash & Culture Shift:
  • Google has evolved from a scrappy search company to a giant, bureaucratic media and advertising conglomerate.
  • Past perception of the tech founder as a “cool” disruptor is replaced by scrutiny of tech leaders over workplace issues and global influence.
  • Internal advocacy at Google is strong, with employee activism around issues like Project Firefly (China search engine) and worker complaints to the NLRB.
• Media & YouTube:
  • Discussion of Alphabet’s opacity regarding YouTube’s financials.
  • YouTube is a vector for misinformation, and its role in political advertising and regulation remains a pressing, unresolved issue.

Notable Quotes

• Felix Salmon:
  “The boys put out this cute little email…saying, ‘Hey, we don’t really need to run this place anymore. We can just let Sundar take over’…as if they aren’t running a trillion-dollar mega behemoth.” ([01:58])
• Anna Shymansky:
  “As Google is coming under more scrutiny…he is going to more and more have to be the face.” ([06:20])
• Emily Peck:
  "Now tech CEO is just like any other CEO…Being a tech founder is cool because…zero accountability." ([06:56])

Timestamps

• [00:00–04:16] — Introduction, overview of Alphabet and its subsidiaries
• [04:16–06:09] — Stock control and voting structure
• [06:09–07:42] — End of an era, change in tech culture
• [07:42–12:32] — YouTube, antitrust, and techlash

---

2. Uber's First-Ever U.S. Safety Report (12:32–23:42)

Key Points

• What Happened:
  • Uber releases a comprehensive U.S.-only safety report, sharing statistics on sexual assaults, fatal physical assaults (murders), and traffic fatalities.
• Transparency:
  • Uber worked with sexual violence experts to define and categorize 21 types of sexual misconduct and assault, including “non-consensual sexual penetration,” which is more broadly defined than legal “rape.”
  • Report counted ~6,000 complaints (reports) from 2.2 billion rides; <500 rapes; ~9 fatal assaults annually (split nearly equally between riders & drivers); ~35 pedestrian deaths in two years.
  • Not all reports verified—these are incident claims, not necessarily confirmed cases.
• Industry Context:
  • Uber is the first in its sector to reveal detailed safety data; the hosts praise this as a positive shift towards transparency.
  • Numbers should be contextualized: compared to overall scale, the incidence rates are extremely low. Fatalities are analogized to other sectors (e.g., Walmart), underscoring that Uber’s figures may not be disproportionately high.
  • Advocates hope Uber's open-source taxonomy will set a reporting standard for other companies.
• Reporting Challenges:
  • Reliable year-to-year comparisons will be hard, as higher reporting may stem from improved accessibility to report, not necessarily increased incidents.
  • The majority of Uber's business is outside the U.S., but this report is U.S.-only; Uber cites differing legal/cultural standards and huge operational differences abroad as reasons for not including global data.
• Societal Implications:
  • There’s a broad failure to address vehicular fatalities socially.
  • The challenge of quantifying and comparing sexual assault data across sectors and companies.
  • Tech enables more transparent reporting, but also reveals uncomfortable truths.

Notable Quotes

• Emily Peck:
  “Transparency is what everyone is asking these companies to do. And the numbers that they put out…when you consider the scale of the platform, they’re not big, they’re just not.” ([13:01])
• Felix Salmon:
  “I mean, like the dead people are true. They’re truly dead.” ([15:32])
• Anna Shymansky:
  “I would probably argue that the fact that they’re putting this out is a sign that the company itself is getting better.” ([16:54])
• Emily Peck:
  "So all Uber is, is—I mean, they were bad with safety, you know, during the Travis time. And I bet if you looked really far back at the data, it would be much worse." ([15:37])

Timestamps

• [12:32–14:34] — What the report covers, scale of incidents
• [14:34–15:57] — Methodology, victimization of both riders/drivers
• [15:57–18:48] — Why Uber did this, potential impact, comparability
• [18:48–22:48] — U.S.-only focus, international limitations
• [22:48–23:42] — Tech/structural differences in other nations, ease of reporting

---

3. Manchester City Investment — Tech’s Expansion into Sports (23:42–34:14)

Key Points

• Headline:
  • Silver Lake, a prominent Silicon Valley investor, makes a ~$500 million investment in City Football Group (owners of Manchester City F.C.), valuing it among the world’s top sports franchises.
• Why Invest in Sports?:
  • Unlike classic “billionaire whimsy,” this is a private equity firm seeking high returns, not a tycoon’s vanity purchase.
  • City Football Group’s multi-team ownership (7 clubs worldwide) is seen as a scalable “entertainment” platform, exporting the Manchester City “model” (youth academy, sports science, etc.) globally.
• Return on Investment Dilemma:
  • Silver Lake’s expectation of tripling its money on a $4.8 billion valuation prompts skepticism.
• Globalization & Media:
  • Soccer’s global reach is a key asset, but the U.S. league remains a distant competitor to European giants. If U.S. spectator interest catches up, NYCFC’s value could surge.
  • The discussion links tech/media convergence—Alphabet/YouTube is entertainment, Silver Lake wants to scale and professionalize sports the way it did tech.
• Monetization Differences—U.S. vs. Global:
  • Big U.S. sports depend on frequent ad breaks, which soccer lacks.
    Felix Salmon: “If you’re a TV company, and you are faced with a choice between running basketball where there’s an ad every five minutes, or a soccer game where there’s no ads for 45 minutes straight, you are going to choose the basketball game.” ([30:10])
  • Soccer’s future in the U.S. likely lies in subscription streaming, not ad breaks.
  • Major sporting events retain value because people watch live—appointments crucial for advertisers.

Notable Quotes

• Felix Salmon:
  “This is not billionaire whimsy…Silver Lake…expect to see a 3x return on their $500 million dollar investment. So my question for you, Anna, is: how on earth does Silver Lake make a 3x return when it’s buying in at a $4.8 billion valuation?” ([25:22])
• Anna Shymansky:
  “I do think it’s interesting because…as of yet, no one’s quite been able to figure out how to get Americans to watch soccer. And women seem to be able to do it a little bit better than men because they play better.” ([29:38])
• Emily Peck:
  “It feels like this company operates like a sports league, but it has more power and strength.” ([27:08])

Timestamps

• [23:42–25:22] — The Silver Lake–Man City deal, valuation stakes
• [25:22–27:39] — Strategy: multi-club model & entertainment push
• [27:39–29:38] — Globalization, growing soccer as a U.S. spectator sport
• [29:38–31:19] — Monetization: ad-supported vs. subscription TV
• [31:19–34:14] — Future of media revenue streams and sports consumption

---

4. Numbers Round & Outro (34:14–41:33)

Highlights

Peloton Ad Backlash (34:14–38:57)

• Emily’s Number: 30 (seconds — duration of viral Peloton ad)
• The hosts discuss the viral “Peloton Wife” ad, which spurred a 13% drop in Peloton stock after Twitter outrage.
• Media virality can significantly impact stock price, even when fundamentals are unchanged.
• Peloton’s bikes are critiqued as overpriced and undifferentiated commodities; success is attributed largely to marketing.

Quotes:

• Felix: “The ad has no effect on anything until it gets noticed by Twitter, at which point it causes the stock to plunge.” ([36:04])

Stephen F. Austin Basketball Miracle (38:57–40:18)

• Anna’s Number: $137,000 (surge in GoFundMe donations for a player whose family was affected by Hurricane Dorian after the team’s upset win over Duke)
• Feel-good moment about sports' power to rally empathy.

Gin Craze in the UK (40:18–41:33)

• Felix’s Number: 66 million (number of gin bottles sold in the UK in 2018, up 41% in one year)
• Gin sales now match the population—Britain’s in a gin boom, helped by “artisanal” tonic water trends.

---

Memorable Moments & Quotes

• “Being a tech founder is cool because the thing that Larry and Sergey have, which no one else has, is zero accountability.” — Felix (06:56)
• “Transparency is what everyone is asking these companies to do. And the numbers that they put out…are not big.” — Emily (13:01)
• "[Silver Lake's investment]…is not billionaire whimsy…my question is: how on earth do they make a 3x return?” — Felix (25:22)

---

Summary Table of Key Segments

| Segment | Topic | Timestamp | |------------------------------------|----------------------------------------|-----------------| | Segment 1 | Alphabet/Google succession & structure | 00:00–12:32 | | Segment 2 | Uber’s safety report | 12:32–23:42 | | Segment 3 | Silver Lake buys Manchester City stake | 23:42–34:14 | | Numbers Round | Peloton ad, SFA win, UK gin | 34:14–41:33 |

---

Tone & Style

Engaging, irreverent, and cerebral—Slate Money’s hosts blend deep industry knowledge with jaded humor and cultural insight. Their banter is sharp but accessible, balancing skepticism with cautious optimism about transparency and innovation in business.

---

Summary prepared for readers seeking an in-depth, structured recap of key themes, arguments, and the tone of Slate Money’s “ABC” episode, omitting extraneous or sponsored content.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign. Welcome to the ABC edition of Slate Money, your guide to the business and finance news of the week. We have so much material to deal with this week. We are going to talk about ABC xyz, AKA Alphabet, AKA Google. We are going to talk about Uber. We are going to talk about Manchester City Football Club. We, by the way, is me, Felix Salmon of Axios and Emily Peck of HuffPost.

[B]

Hello.

[A]

And Anna Shymansky of Breaking Views.

[B]

Hello.

[A]

And we are going to talk about not only all of these things, but also in a lively Slate plus discussion, poor Argentina being picked on by Donald Trump and what it has to do with the price of soybeans, which I promise is more interesting than it sounds, especially if you manage to make it through the lively numbers round, where we will talk about the greatest TV ad that has appeared on Twitter in the past three weeks. It's all coming up on Slate Money. Now I know my ABCs. The official URL if you want to find Alphabet on the Internet is ABC xyz.

[B]

That makes sense.

[A]

That's where their blog is. Or it's also at Google Blog. But Google Blog is just for Google. ABC XYZ is for the parent company, which is Alphabet, because they're all quirky and they put out letters from Larry and Sergey, who are always referred to by their first names. And we're all on first name terms with Larry and Sergey, the boys, as.

[B]

Their name, even though they're 46.

[A]

Exactly. The boys who needed adult supervision. Do you remember that?

[C]

Yes.

[A]

And the boys put out this cute little email with two exclamation points at the end of paragraphs because that's how, like, you know, relatable they are saying, hey, we don't really need to run this place anymore. We can just let Sundar take over. And isn't it all just like free, friendly and we aren't running a, you know, trillion dollar global mega behemoth company that basically controls everything that you do in every aspect of your life.

[B]

Including your new Fitbit, Felix.

[A]

Including my new Fitbit, which they now own. And all of the data about my sleep goes to Fitbit. And they say it doesn't go to Google because maybe they're two different companies or something. As I wrote in my newsletter this week, they have so many subsidiaries, like, I literally lost count of how many CEOs there are within Alphabet.

[B]

But so the interesting thing I thought with this news was so first, what is the news? Oh, yeah, the news is the boys are riding off into the sunset on their segues as Matt Levine Put it, they are leaving day to day operations at the company which they were already half out of anyway because they had created a essentially this whole umbrella Alphabet thing just so they could focus on the fun things they wanted to do and leave like the Google business to.

[C]

Sundog actually makes money.

[B]

Google and YouTube. I mean 90% of the business is Google and then I think I might.

[C]

Even be less than 10%, 3% of the profits. Yeah, not Google.

[B]

So they were basically.

[A]

There are bits of not Google that make profits apparently. Wow, who knew?

[B]

I mean that includes YouTube which is like.

[A]

But they're mostly. Well, basically I think the idea is that maybe reven the consumer facing stuff which is linked to your Google account. So that would be Google, gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, you know, all of that is all part of Google. And then Waymo is entirely separate which is the self driving cars. Calico is entirely separate, which is like we will make medical breakthroughs that make you live forever. And all of these other random bits and pieces. I'm not sure about Nest. Nest is separate as well, right? Yeah, yeah, it's a little bit. Well, it's extremely confusing. It was done for reasons which no one entirely understood in the first place.

[B]

Well, I think one reason would be the two guys that are leaving, Larry.

[A]

And Sergey, who by the way, can I just say that in terms of riding off on their Segways, they both have a private 747 with a king size bed in it. They're riding off in their private seats.

[B]

Right, of course, but. And like, of course they don't want to run Google. It's like a big complicated company. That's boring. It's not what they started with, which was an exciting search company, quote unquote change.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It's being tech last from within. Even like Google's employees, I feel like are one of the most vocal group of tech workers out there right now. I mean there, there are some that were fired that are threatening to go to the NLRB with complaints.

[A]

There were.

[B]

Walk out, walk out.

[A]

There were complaints about Project Firefly which was Google's attempt to do a search engine in China.

[C]

So now they're like Sundar, you get all of this.

[B]

Sundar gets all of it. And yeah, why would they if you had. That's one of the great mysteries of the billionaires. Why do they keep their jobs? Just go take, take your.

[A]

Well, that's what they're doing.

[C]

Right.

[B]

So they're finally doing the work.

[A]

But they're also keeping their class B stock.

[C]

Right, Right.

[B]

So they also still get to control the company.

[A]

Right.

[C]

The best of all possible worlds.

[B]

And they control the stock. And they're basically Sundar's bosses still.

[A]

They are, yeah. They control the board. They can hire and fire sender at will. He doesn't. He ostensibly reports to the board, but in reality, he reports to Larry and Sergey because they control the board. They have over 50% of the votes between them. I did the math for my newsletter, and it works out that Larry alone has $51 billion worth of Alphabet shares, and on average, his shares have five votes each. And Sundar is not exactly poor. He has $100 million worth of Alphabet shares, but his shares have, on average, 0.07 votes each.

[B]

Wow.

[C]

So he has to do all the work, but doesn't get the votes. It seems, in a way, like he's. I mean, I don't want to say he's getting the short end of the stick. At the end of the day, he's.

[A]

Running Google and he is making like nine figures.

[C]

Exactly. Exactly. But, you know, as Google is becoming, is coming under more scrutiny, and he is going to more and more have to be the face. And now, granted, he already essentially was, but there was always the thought that, you know, you could still kind of lug the other guys in, and now that's going to be a lot harder.

[B]

So now, tech CEO used to be like a cool job, right? They like the boys back in the day. They got to do cool stuff. Don't be evil. Bop around, sexually harass people, sexually harass whoever they want. No one cared. And now tech CEO is just like any other CEO.

[A]

Well, no, but. But the thing which is cool, you know, that whole thing about, you know, a million dollars isn't cool. You know what cool is? A billion dollars. Being a tech CEO isn't cool. Being a tech founder is cool because the thing that Larry and Sergey have, which no one else has, is zero accountability. There is literally no way in which anyone can hold them accountable for anything that happens at Alphabet, despite the fact that they control the company. Yeah.

[C]

And. Yeah.

[B]

Whoa.

[C]

Well, and it's also like what you're saying. I mean, it's a sign of kind of an end of an era, I think. I mean, we're getting a lot of these signs, but, like, you know, tech is maturing and it's becoming just a normal, incredibly dominant industry. So it's unsurprising that you're going to have slightly more boring people running it.

[B]

And Google isn't even a tech company in a lot of ways now. Like Matt Levine pointed out, it's an advertising company.

[A]

It's always been a media company. And we are entering a crazy election cycle where a bunch of fraught questions over political advertising and misinformation and all of that are going to be swirling and Sundar is going to be at the center of that. And the New York Times had a huge investigation a few months ago about YouTube, which is probably one of the most powerful vectors for misinformation on planet Earth. And no one's really grappled with that within Alphabet.

[B]

And because of the structure, we don't even. YouTube doesn't even have to tell us very much about it.

[A]

It tells us nothing. We know, we literally know nothing about YouTube's financials because of the way, as you say, Alphabet is structured. It is considered not material at an Alphabet level, which is probably bullshit. But it was also, according to a letter to the SEC, they said, yeah, we don't break out the YouTube financials because Larry doesn't look at them, which I'm sure he didn't. But now they can't use that excuse anymore because they can't say that Sundar doesn't look at them because sun does. Still running Google. So it'll be interesting to see whether we see the YouTube financials because by all accounts, by all estimates, YouTube as a standalone company would be one of the 40 biggest companies in America.

[C]

I mean, they should probably just spin it off.

[B]

Warren should get in there and break that stuff down.

[C]

They should. I mean, Google should.

[A]

So, okay, so I've never heard Anna be in charge of like breaking up tech giants. Why should they spit out YouTube?

[C]

I mean, it would have a, just like, it would have a higher value on its own and B, if you're thinking about like right now, they're going to be having to deal on the Google level with all of this kind of anti tech regulatory issues and then they're also going to be having to deal with that on the YouTube level. It just seems like, why do they need that extra headache? I think it'd be better for Google and I think we better for YouTube.

[B]

I think Google has both companies better off in terms of tech lash. Google has it at the employee level, but at the, at the public level the outrage is more fueled towards YouTube. So if they did separate, that's coming.

[A]

I mean, like, I think at the public level it's more towards Amazon, to be honest. Like, I don't think that Google has faced nearly the level of public opprobrium that it has that matches with the, you know, media, Twitter obsession with privacy issues and misinformation and that kind of.

[B]

Stuff at the YouTube level, like, the coverage has been really negative.

[A]

The coverage has been bad.

[B]

The pedophilia stuff on YouTube, Alex Jones stuff, the misinformation, all the lunatics, you know, that are getting tons of money through YouTube. I feel like the potential, the media coverage has been really bad and the potential for public backlash is there.

[A]

I just haven't seen any. The tech clash hasn't made its way to the general public really for anyone, but it did a little bit with Uber, with Delete Uber. It did a little bit with Amazon, I think. I really don't think it has with Google, not yet. And in general, it really hasn't made its way from press coverage into the general public, I think.

[C]

When, how would you define that?

[A]

When people like Elizabeth Warren comes out and says, I want to break up the tech giants, I don't see that as a huge applause line where like the Pennsylvania crowds are going to be like, yeah, break out the tech giants. It's not something which is that important to them.

[B]

That's fair. I mean, the companies you just mentioned, I feel like there's an acknowledgement, and I may be extrapolating from my own life that, that these companies are doing lots of bad stuff, invading your privacy, yada, yada yada. But, like, we need them. Like, I really need that Google search and the, and the maps, I need it. And, and, and Amazon is quite convenient and Uber works really well. You know, these are like, they've made their way into our daily lives in a way that's hard to extricate.

[C]

Right. So people might complain about them, but they're not going to stop using Google.

[A]

No. And I think, and this is one of the things which really annoys me is that when people start talking about how to deal with the antitrust issues in big tech, there's a lot of backlash against that from Silicon Valley saying, but people love it and they still continue to use it. And they're not deleting Facebook. And it's like, it's not on the individual to do these things. It's not on individuals to stop using these services. And in fact, if you broke up these services, if you did spin off YouTube from Alphabet, like, no one would expect people to stop using YouTube. It would just stop making Alphabet such a large and powerful company because it would face competition from YouTube instead of owning YouTube.

[B]

I mean, they're almost like public utilities and that you, I mean, you need, you need Google you need your electric company to work. I need my cable company, which everyone hates their cable company. But you continue to use cable. Right. I mean, they just need to be regulated. They're that important.

[A]

So let's talk about the most evil one of all, which is Uber.

[B]

Dun, dun, dun. Emily, I have a lot to say.

[A]

You had advance an advance copy of this report?

[B]

Yes, I did.

[A]

So I was skimming through 84 pages trying to work out what this report was saying. But you've been looking at these 84 pages for how long?

[B]

Like a few. All week.

[A]

All week, yeah. So what are the 84 pages and what do they say?

[B]

So what Uber has done, it's put out a safety report, includes data on three things that most companies never, ever, ever, ever talk about. Sexual assault, traffic fatalities and deaths from physical assault, which includes murder. So I'm here, and I know this would seem crazy to listeners, but, like, this is good. Uber did a good thing.

[A]

Transparency is true.

[B]

Transparency is what everyone is asking these companies to do. And the numbers that they put out. My story really focused on sexual assault. When you consider the scale of the platform, they're not big, they're just not. There was fewer than 500 rapes, or what Uber calls non consensual sexual penetration, which is actually more expansive definition than rape than you would find in most states. But that's across 2.2 billion rides, which is like 0.0002%. And of those non consensual sexual penetrations, you know, some of those were of the drivers themselves, so.

[A]

Right. So, I mean, one of the things that jumped out to me from this report is that to a first approximation, the riders and the drivers seem to be victims in roughly equal measure. Like, if you look at the. What did they call them? This is fatal physical assaults. They don't use the word murder. They use the term fatal physical assaults. If you look at the fatal physical assaults over the past two years, there were eight riders and seven drivers.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So it kind of splits 50. 50. I mean, the sexual assault is more weighted towards the writers, but there are a lot of drivers who are suffering this as well.

[B]

It's interesting. What really interested me was the way Uber went about counting sexual assault, because no, no company has, like, done this, or if they have, they have never talked about it. And no one knows what sexual assault is. Like, the president's been accused of it, Joe Biden's been accused of it. We think it's rape, but it's also like, Pat's on the ass. Like, no One knows. So what Uber did was like work with these, like with experts in the field of sexual violence to come up with this massive taxonomy of 21 terms of sexual misconduct and sexual assault, going from like leering all the way up to rape before it even got to the point where it could count what was going on. It's much more expansive definition. So I actually felt like defensive of them today, cuz people are coming out and being like, this is shocking. This is a scandal. And at the bottom line it's, it's about 6,000 reports. So they're not all, they may not all be true. They're reports. Right? These are just things, customers.

[A]

But I mean like the dead people are true. They're, they're truly dead people are true.

[B]

But like go to Walmart. How many people have died at Walmart in the past two years? I would bet you it's more. And they have fewer users. Like all Uber is, is. I mean, they were bad with safety, you know, during the Travis time. And I bet if you looked really far back at the data, it would be much worse. I would think so.

[A]

This is the big question I have about the report. There was actually a thing at the very beginning report, I didn't make it quite to the end, but there was a letter at the beginning saying, quote, we know that reporting goes up when people know how to report and feel that their reports will be taken seriously.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

So the advocates talked a lot about this.

[A]

So, so the big question for me is as Uber puts out this report, presumably every year from here on in.

[B]

Every two years.

[A]

Every two years from here on in, how are we going to be able to judge whether it's improving or not?

[B]

It's, it's going to be really hard.

[A]

So when you say that things have improved since the Travis era, like, it's really hard to find any quantitative data for all that. There's a million numbers in this and there's lots of, you know, assaults per 100 million vehicle miles traveled and all of these kind of, you know, metrics. I don't know and I can't see anywhere in here that Uber has found any way of judging whether it's getting better or whether it's getting worse.

[C]

Well, but I would probably argue that the fact that they're putting this out is a sign that the company itself is getting better. Just in the sense that they're taking this seriously. Because, you know, as we're talking about this, you know, Emily, as you say, if you put these numbers in context, they're really really small.

[A]

They're not that small. I mean, nine murders is in one year.

[C]

But you have to put it in context. Compare to what happens on public transit, compare it what happens in taxis, compare it to what happens in many, many other place.

[B]

Literally Walmart again, right?

[C]

And the whole point though is just this kind of conversation shows it. There's almost only downside to Uber for doing this. So why do you think they're doing it?

[B]

I mean, I think they're doing it because they had to. Because the new, like every time something happened, it got massive publicity in a way that most companies do not get. And they promised to do it, so they had to. I think they're, the advocates that work with them are hoping other companies do it and use the taxonomy to actually define this, right?

[A]

They open source the taxonomy, right?

[B]

And they're like, they're like, you know, their, their PR person's like, you have to call the airlines, you have to call hotels. Like they need to do this too. And they've been going out and like talking to other companies and trying to get them to do it too. And like that would be great because it's my suspicion, working on these kinds of issues, that most companies aren't that much better. It's just that Uber has such massive scale if that there are numbers here.

[A]

If Uber comes in and says, here's our open source taxonomy and methodology. We've done all of the heavy lifting to create this taxonomy and methodology. Now anyone can use it and if other people use it, then we can start getting apples to apples comparisons between companies and try and get a feel for which companies are better and worse. I mean, in principle I, I kind of half see it in practice. I don't believe we're ever going to get there because there will always be differences in terms of how easy it is to report. And a lot of this is just going to be a function of how easy it is to report these things. I mean, if you die in Walmart, you go to the police, you don't go to Walmart, right?

[B]

I mean a lot of people, right.

[C]

But if you get raped in Uber, you don't go to Uber, you go to the police.

[B]

Some people still just go to Uber because a lot of people don't report rapes. But one thing people talked about was the Clery act, which requires colleges who get, you know, public funding to report crime statistics. And part of that is rape and whatnot. And there are some colleges that put out their statistics and they claim to have zero sexual assaults, right? Which Everyone knows is absolute bullshit. They do everything in their power to get that numbers to be zero. Like, not listening. Do they have no students head in the sand, everything. So the appeal of the taxonomy getting used by everyone is that you don't have that situation.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But maybe, I mean, in this day and age, aren't these kinds of things a material risk? Like, isn't there an argument to be made that public companies should have to report this stuff?

[C]

No, but it's interesting. It kind of goes into the ESG conversation, because that's always what you hear when you talk with people in ESG is that the data is so bad that everybod measures these things in different ways. And you hear people saying, we need better standards, we need better standards. And granted, we don't have those standards yet, but this could be one more thing where there's a push to say we have to have more uniform standards, that it's not a choice, you're going to have to report this kind of data.

[A]

So, yeah, and one of the things which just jumps out at me at this report is the way in which, as a society, we and every other country in the world does an incredibly good job at ignoring traffic deaths. There were, like, 35 pedestrians got killed in Uber crashes basically over the past two years, which is a lot of people dead on the road. And that's tiny compared to the total number of pedestrians who died every two years. And we, you know, it's. It's really, really hard to find people who take this issue seriously. Weirdly, Mike Bloomberg takes this issue very seriously. But, like, it's. In general, it's hard. And the reason it's hard is because you look at it, you're like, Christ, you know, 35 people have been. Have died in Uber crashes. And I wouldn't want to run a company that was responsible for 35 people dying. But on some level, maybe I can kind of believe them if they tell me that if Uber hadn't been on the road, that number would actually be higher.

[B]

I mean, a couple of things. First, they looked at their data and compared it to, you know, overall, the NHTSA data, and they claim that their traffic fatality rate is half regular because they have older drivers and newer cars, which I thought was pretty interesting. And then the second thing that what you were saying made me think of Felix is there's this, like, really good on the media episode all about pedestrian fatalities being a direct result of, like, public policy and how, you know, there's nowhere to cross the street. And, like, you just need to cross the street.

[A]

This is a government issue.

[B]

Walk a mile.

[A]

Don't put this on. We shouldn't put this on companies.

[C]

Right?

[B]

I mean, I feel like we should. I should definitely say that like it's awful that 6,000 people were sexually assaulted during Uber rides and that there were murders. Like this is all bad. And that there are fatalities. But yeah, it's I think public policy with those pedestrian deaths.

[A]

But let me ask you one thing, Emily, which is the other huge question which I had reading this report. I don't know if you asked Uber about this, which is the majority of Uber's business is outside the US and there's nothing in this report about. And the majority, by far the majority of the most egregious reports of rapes and murders and stuff is outside the US and they don't seem to mention that at all.

[B]

They didn't. All they said to me about that was like, we couldn't do this globally because the taxonomy is diff would be different in different ways.

[A]

Why would the culture be different?

[B]

Because things that are considered inappropriate in the U.S. like, like they counted unwelcome non consensual kissing of a non sexual body part, which is like kisses on the cheek. They counted that for example, as sexual assault. And I think it's like the first category. And like if you're in Europe, like you're getting assaulted left and right, like there would be a million reports. So that's why they kind of like claimed that. But I kind of think they could have done the fatality stuff. Right? I mean other countries track that to death is death. So I don't know if that's much of an excuse.

[A]

I think, I think it's harder for them to try. I mean, I keep on in the back of my head remembering that 40% of Uber rides are settled in cash. And it's like Uber is much less sort of automated and centralized in other countries than it is in the U.S. i mean the number of cash settled Uber is in the U.S. i think is zero. I think, I think no one does it, but it's very, very common in the rest of the world.

[B]

Yeah, that's what advocates said also is like, like if you get assaulted in some of the categories like on the subway, you're not going to complain about it. Like you're just going to go on with your life. Right? We know this but like Uber, there's a record time, place, everything. It's all, you don't have to do anything. And you just. Now they made it easier. You could just press a button and complain about it. My point is just that the tech makes it easier for these complaints to happen. And what you're saying would make it harder in the rest of the world.

[A]

Okay, I want to talk about Manchester City Football Club. I, as regular listeners to Slate Money, will know I am not a sports person. My friend Noah Breyer, in his wonderful. Why is this interesting email, described me a couple of days as a sports ignoramus. So that posited this Manchester City deal is super interesting. Silver Lake, which is a Silicon Valley technology investor, or at least used to be a technology investor up until a couple years ago, has invested $500 million in the parent company of Manchester City, which is called Citi Football Group. I think at a $4.8 billion valuation, which is makes it pretty much the most valuable sports team on the planet.

[B]

Second most.

[A]

Well, I mean the only question, the only question is whether the Dallas Cowboys are worth More than $4.8 billion. And since Jerry Jones isn't selling, we don't know. But it's a massive valuation for like Man City, who like when I was growing up were not exactly considered a major football team. And the thing that really fascinates me is this is not billionairewimsey. This is not Stevie Cohen coming in and saying, I want to buy the New York Mets because I am very rich and I can afford them. And so there are no more Damien.

[C]

Hirst pieces to buy two, $2.6 billion.

[A]

$2 billion for a majority share at a $2.6 billion valuation. That's clearly just like still Steve Ballmer buying whatever that team was in Los Angeles.

[C]

Clippers.

[A]

Clippers, yeah. That's just, you know, when you have too much money, what you do is you buy a sports team. This is not that. This is Silver Lake who has like limited partners who are paying 2 and 20 and they expect to see like a 3x return on their 4,500 million dollars investment. So my question for you, Anna, is how on earth does Silver Lake make a 3x return when it's buying in at a $4.8 billion valuation?

[C]

That's a very good question. I mean, I think partly this is, you know, they have an overall kind of entertainment strategy, right? There are lots of different types of entertainment companies and this is supposed to kind of fit in. And I believe what they're also doing is they're buying a lot of like they've like smaller or like in like a lower level clubs as well. And so it's kind of the idea that these are all going to work together.

[A]

Right. So City Football Group owns, I think, seven football teams around the world, including the New York City Football Club. And the idea is that whatever they've perfected at Man City with their style of play and their sports medicine and their youth development teams and all of this kind of stuff, they can then take that expertise and apply it to Melbourne and to New York and to all of these other teams that they own.

[C]

Right. And whether that will actually work is a very big question. But it's also also, you know, say you have athletes who are good, but they're not quite ready for the big leagues. You can also potentially have them play in some of these lower level leagues as well. You know, it can all kind of.

[A]

Work, move them around the world.

[B]

I thought that sounded kind of genius. And I was like, why, why don't the Yankees buy the other teams with names Cardinals? I don't know.

[C]

You know what I'm saying?

[A]

I think because baseball is not an international sport in the same way that soccer is.

[B]

But like the idea that because it feels like this, this, this company operates like, like a sports league, but it has so much, it has more power and, and strength to, you know.

[A]

Well, they never have more than one team in any given country.

[C]

Right. And I believe, like. And don't a lot of MLB like, control some of their minor leagues that are connected with them?

[B]

Yeah, Right.

[C]

So it's similar to that control like.

[B]

One minor league team, though. There's not like.

[A]

Yeah, but there's also different leagues have different amounts of power over what you can and can't own. And I think by restricting yourself to one team per country, you manage to get around all of those rules about like, you can't own two teams and.

[B]

That kind of thing be a conflict of interest.

[A]

But like, to your point, Anna, you're right that Silver Lake, this is just part of their broader media entertainment push, which includes Endeavor, which bought William Morris, it's this big talent agency, also bought Miss Universe. And what's fascinating to me is that this idea of tech, and we were talking about this when we were talking about Alphabet, you know, Alphabet is YouTube. It's entertainment technology is now media, it's advertising, it's entertainment. And sports is a huge part of that entertainment economy. And on some level, I guess I understand what Silver Lake is doing here, is they're trying to say, well, this bit of the entertainment economy, the media, the talent agencies, the Miss Universe pageant, the Manchester cities, all of this kind of stuff hasn't Become rolled up, scaled, professionalized in the way that much of the rest of the technology world has. And so that's our big bet. I just don't entirely see how they're going to make money at it.

[C]

No, I mean, I'll agree with you on that. I mean, I. But I do think it's interesting because. Right. Like, even what you were saying with Man City, like, growing up, you would never have thought they would have become what they became now. And part of that is because of this kind of the Premier League has become so globalized. So I guess there's also that idea, if you can kind of bring some of these other teams up, too, to kind of. You would never think now that. Of what they could become in 10, 15 years. So I don't know if maybe that's part of the idea that you just have such a bigger global audience for soccer now.

[A]

Right. I suppose the idea would be that, you know, there's been this perennial dream in the United States that soccer is going to become a major spectator sport. It's been a huge participation sport for decades. But, like, people don't watch whatever league. I don't even know the name of the league.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But if it. If they ever do, if it ever reaches the point where the US League becomes half as big as the English league or the Italian league or the German league or the Spanish league, then it is fair to assume that New York City Football Club will be near the top of that league and will be worth, you know, more than $1 billion on its own.

[C]

Well, agreed. And also, I mean, obviously, soccer has always been so big and the rest of the world outside the US as well. So, you know, that's already like an enormous market that you can, you know, with some of these teams. But. But I do think that's right, that as of yet, no one's quite been able to figure out how to get Americans to watch soccer. And women seem to be able to do it a little bit better than men because they play better. But, I mean, it's interesting. I mean, I think part of it is that there just aren't enough breaks. Americans like sports with breaks. This is my theory.

[A]

Well, no, it's not the Americans. It's the TV companies.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The purpose of the break is to run ads and make money. If you're a TV company and you are faced with a choice between running a basketball where there's an ad every five minutes, or a soccer game where there's no ads for 45 minutes straight, you are going to choose the basketball game because it's just that much more lucrative.

[C]

No, and actually as you're saying that now, I'm probably going to go back on what I just said because I will just say that because like, literally I was watching a lot of sports last week and we were watching everything on tape delay, which is wonderful because then you can get there a game really quickly because you just fast forward through all the advertisements and all the like referees looking at the play to see what actually happened. So I don't know. I mean, but, but the only way that the sport takes off is if there is money to be made from it. And the only way there is going to be money to be made of it if is if there are advertisers.

[A]

And except somehow there seems to be no shortage of money in England or Spain or Italy or Brazil or Germany or all these other places with soccer leagues. And they don't put breaks in the middle of their games.

[C]

Right. But they also existed for so long and they've clearly figured out other ways to monetize it. And granted, maybe you could do that here, but I mean this is how Americans increasingly consume sports. They consume them from their living rooms, right?

[A]

I think that's true. Well, I don't think that's increasing. I think that's always been the case. But I do think there's a secular trend away from ad supported television and towards subscription TV like, you know, Netflix, hbo, all of the, you know, Disney plus. And as that trend continues, and ESPN is certainly large part of the Disney strategy, I think the requirement for sports to monetize through advertising goes down and the ability for people to enjoy watching sports on television at home does. No, no longer requires feeding them lots of ads because there are lots of other ways you can just get them to pay $5 a month or whatever.

[C]

It's possible. Although I guess I would just say that one of the reasons that sports are still considered, you know, this kind of really valuable commodity is because it's one of the things people still tend to watch live, right?

[A]

Sure.

[C]

But the only reason that that's valuable is if you can feed them ads.

[A]

I don't understand that at all. Why is it more valuable? Why is it, why isn't ad. Sorry that I don't understand that at all. Like you are watching a sport live and you are willing to pay for it either, you know, with cash. So if you're watching a sport live and you're willing to pay for that with cash, then that's a great revenue stream for Whoever owns that sport, whether or not they can serve an ad in the middle of it.

[C]

But if I'm watching it actually live, I can't do what I did last week and fast forward to the ads.

[A]

Sure.

[C]

So, yes, it is possible that if you got a subscription model the same way you had, like, boxing or whatever, that that worked on a larger scale and everyone was just paying, then maybe that could work. But as of right now, the reason that they're considered valuable is because more people are going to watch them live than almost any other type of thing. And so they're going to almost certainly then watch the ads because they can't fast forward to them.

[B]

Like the super bowl is the biggest advertising, Right?

[A]

Exactly. There is. There is this idea that ads are more valuable if people don't fast forward. People watch them, which, I mean, it's funny, I've seen surveys like, which cast a little bit of doubt on that. And like, the amount of brand value you get by fast forwarding through an ad is actually not much lower than if you get. If you actually watch the ad. But suddenly advertisers seem to prefer to. To show ads that people are going to be watching. And so that does increase the value of the ads. I just think that in terms of soccer, the big hope of soccer as a spectator sport in the United States is 100% on television. It's 100% people watching at home. I just don't think it's going to be ad supported. I think the future of television is not as much less ad supported than it has ever been. And the future of soccer in particular is not going to be ad supported because, you know, it's 45 minutes straight and you're not. You can't put an ad in the middle of a, you know, 45 minutes.

[C]

Of football as opposed to actual football. You can put an ad every three seconds.

[B]

Nothing's going to ever be like football in the U.S. soccer is just never going to. That time is over.

[A]

Let's have a numbers round. Emily, do you have a number?

[B]

I have a number.

[A]

What's your number?

[B]

My number is 30. Okay, 30 seconds. That is. That's how long the peloton ad was.

[A]

Was it 30 seconds? It felt like an hour.

[B]

So for those of you who I guess might not know, this peloton ad went viral this week featuring the peloton wife who gets a peloton for Christmas from her husband. She's very excited about it, and she's super excited, but then she's very afraid to take her first class. Even though she's. I don't know if she's fit, but she's quite thin and.

[A]

But it's like, how is she so excited to get a Peloton if she's never actually done a Peloton class before? How does she know it so good?

[B]

Everybody. Well, everyone knows about Peloton.

[A]

Oh, okay.

[B]

And so this ad, I guess it came out in November to. Not many people noticed it, and then someone.

[A]

But then media Twitter noticed it.

[B]

Media Twitter. It went viral, allegedly. The company's stock went down because of this.

[A]

It went down 13% in two days.

[C]

Well, but how did the. How much did the entire market go down in the. No, the market was going up by as much.

[A]

The point is the stock. I actually looked at this because it made no sense to me at all. I couldn't believe that an ad caused. How liquid is that stock? It's a liquid stock, but what people don't tell you is that between early October and, you know, Tuesday of this week, the stock had gone up from $20 to $36, and then it went back down to 30. So there was an element of just kind of, what goes up must go down. But there was definitely this amazing phenomenon whereby the ad has no effect on anything until it gets noticed by Twitter, at which point it causes the stock to plunge. Which was hilarious.

[B]

I mean, yeah, I guess people were taking it so far that, again, I defended Uber earlier, and now I'm like, listen, the ad was fine.

[A]

It wasn't that bad.

[C]

And see, I had the same thought. I was like, granted, I feel like if it hadn't been.

[B]

Oh, my God, Jessamine.

[A]

All right, we're gonna bring Jessamine in here. Jessamine, what did you make of the Peloton ad? So Jessamy and Molly has a point that the title of the ad is the Gift that Gives Back. And the implication being that if you give your wife a peloton, then you get a return in the form of a hotter wife or something like that.

[C]

See, my assumption is that, Okay, I feel like if the ad had been done and it just hadn't been a gift from a guy to a girl, it would have been completely different. Like, I feel like if it had just been like, a woman buys herself this or whatever. And I think that was the problem, that they should have thought that through. And also the fact that she was thin at the beginning and thin at the end, if anything, I feel like any different. Well, no, but that's my whole point. If anything, I feel like that makes it Less body shaming. It's not like they were like, oh, I, you know, I need to fix my body. She's like, no, no, I'm just want to work out. You know what I mean?

[B]

Like, why did she make a video? Maybe that's the Giving back is the video that she gives back to her husband of her getting up at 5:00am The.

[A]

The other.

[B]

I mean, maybe it wasn't a good ad, but I feel like the other.

[A]

Thing is that anyone who watched season one of Black Mirror will remember the bike episode where like, you, you have to bike to get 15 million credits. And anyone who's seen that episode of Black Mirror is just going to be terrified by this.

[B]

I wrote Black Mirror on my index card to talk about this number. So thank you. So, P.S. my husband and I maybe want a bike for a joint Christmas gift because we want one and we were looking at pelotons and I just have to say they're quite expensive.

[A]

They are insanely expensive.

[B]

They're $2,245 and then you have to pay $39 a month for the classes. That is crazy. Exercise bike bikes aren't that expensive.

[A]

They are a commodity. Like, they are all exactly the same. And there is absolutely no reason why you should buy a peloton bike rather than any one of the 87 identical other bikes. And in fact, a lot of the competitors are not only cheaper, but better. Like for instance, I know a tiny little bit about exercise bikes. Don't ask me why. One of the things that you want to be able to do in an exercise classes is make them harder or easier over the course of the exercise class. And on a peloton, you do that the old fashioned way, which is you reach down and there's a little knob and you rotate it to the right and you rotate it to the left. And with all of these newfangled ones, they just do that automatically and you don't need to twiddle anything. So I'm like, why not use one of those if it's cheaper?

[B]

So all peloton has is marketing and they fuck that up.

[C]

Maybe.

[B]

Although we just gave it a really long act.

[C]

Exactly. So it's a fair point.

[A]

Anna, what is your.

[C]

My number is 137,000.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

Okay. So the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Duke's basketball team was beat by this lower level team, the Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks. What? What? Yes. So, but the thing that's amazing about this is there is a player. There's a player on this team who the.

[A]

The Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks. Yes.

[C]

Who is from the Bahamas. And the university had set up this GoFundMe for his family because their home and, like, a church was destroyed in Hurricane Dorian. And before this game, it had $2,000. By the Friday after this game, it had $137,000 because everybody hates Duke. And so all these people were giving money because he scored the winning basket to beat Duke.

[B]

That's amazing.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Say the name of the team again.

[C]

The Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks.

[B]

Where are they?

[A]

Are they a university team? What's the university?

[C]

Stephen F. Austin.

[B]

Stephen with a ph.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

I knew that. I felt it.

[A]

There's it. So, okay. And I have now learned many things, including the fact there is a university called Stephen F. Austin University.

[B]

I like that their team is the Lumberjack.

[C]

Agreed.

[B]

It's not offensive.

[A]

Do they wear, like, lumberjack shirts?

[C]

I don't think so.

[A]

My number is 66 million, which is the number of bottles of gin that was sold in the United Kingdom in 2018, which is. I mean, is that a lot? 66 million is like the population of the United Kingdom. This is a rise of 41% in one year.

[B]

What's going on?

[A]

Gin has taken over the uk. Gin is now, like. There's a new gin resurgence. There was a big gin thing in Spain for many years, but the Spanish don't drink nearly as much as the English do. The English know how to drink, and the English are drinking gin.

[B]

Is there some other alcohol that people aren't drinking as much?

[A]

Probably beer.

[B]

How. How do they drink it? With tonic.

[A]

That is the normal way to drink gin. Yeah, but. And, and, and one of the reasons why gin is taking off is that there is a resurgence in tonic as well. It used to be that you had the choice of, like, Schweppes or Schweppes, and now there are a million artisanal tonics that you get to experiment with.

[B]

Oh, I bet that's good. I would be interested in tasting some artisanal tonic.

[A]

Maybe we will have an artisanal tonics edition of Slate Money. So, yeah. On which note, I think we will wrap this episode up. We're gonna have a Slate plus on why is Donald Trump picking on Argentina? If you are a Slate plus listener, enjoy that. If you're not. Thank you for listening to Slate Money and thank you to Jessamine Molly for producing. We will be back next week with another episode of Slate Money.