Good morning. Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani has won the NYC mayoral race. Here’s a breakdown of how much some of Mamdani’s biggest plans will cost.
In today’s big story, as the Disney-YouTube TV fight drags on, the House of Mouse is turning into a villain among its fans.
What’s on deck:
Markets: Hedge fund’s October report cards are in.
Tech: Palantir’s Alex Karp vs. the short sellers.
Business: Buying a home has become an old person’s game.
But first, what channel is the game on?
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The big story
Sports blackout
Sam Hodde/Getty Images
“Did you catch last night’s game?” is a pretty innocuous question, unless you’re talking to a YouTube TV subscriber these days.
An ongoing dispute between the TV streamer and Disney has left YouTube TV’s sports fans out in the cold since Friday. ABC and all ESPN channels were blacked out for the platform’s roughly 10 million subscribers, which meant a mostly college football-free Saturday and no “Monday Night Football.”
You might roll your eyes at sports fans up in arms over not being able to watch their little games. However, for Disney, it’s yet another thing its customers are upset about. The media giant known for creating some famous villains is on the verge of turning into one, writes BI’s James Faris.
From the rising cost of visiting its parks to the recent Jimmy Kimmel saga, Disney continues to find ways to upset large swaths of its fans. And unlike many of its previous dramas, this one doesn’t fall along party lines.
(Alphabet, YouTube TV’s parent company, has also caught some heat. The tech giant’s argument against paying Disney more comes while it’s estimating spending some $93 billion this year to fuel its AI efforts.)
Pascak Della Zuana/Sygma via Getty Images; Rebecca Zisser/BI
The YouTube TV-Disney dispute also feels different from the carriage-fee fights we’re used to.
For decades, cable providers butted heads with TV networks over what they should pay for their content. Agreements were often reached at the 25th hour without impacting the viewer.
Even if there was a blackout, a solution was inevitable. That’s because cable was basically the only game in town. If networks wanted to get paid for their channels, they had to come to some kind of agreement.
But the great unbundling and the rise of streamers have changed the landscape. Disney has other ways to broadcast its channels, including its new ESPN streaming service.
Disney’s been happy to tout its new streamer as a place where fans can watch all the games they’ve been missing out on. It’s part of the reason why it has some leverage when it comes to negotiations, writes BI’s Lucia Moses and Lara O’Reilly.
Ultimately, both sides still want to come to an agreement. Digging their heels in will only hurt them in the long run, and pressure is mounting.
ESPN has two NBA games tonight featuring the New York Knicks and Los Angeles Lakers, both massive markets. And this Saturday brings another slate of college football games.
But in this new streaming era that companies are trying to understand, the entire episode could serve as a warning about the limits customers have when it comes to their subscriptions. (Even for their beloved football.)
“So we’re just not watching Monday Night Football huh?” former NFL star and current commentator JJ Watt posted on X on Monday. “I’m not buying another streaming subscription…”
3 things in markets
Phil McCarten/Reuters
Pretty much everyone on Wall Street is in for a sweet payday this season. Year-end bonuses are set to rise across every business line, with traders being the big winners, according to a new report from compensation consultancy Johnson Associates. It’s not all rainbows and sunshine, though. The report warned that the existential threat of AI could reshape the financial workforce.
October was mostly full of treats, not tricks, for big-name hedge funds. Ken Griffin’s Citadel had one of its strongest months of the year, with all five of its strategies making money across the firm. Here’s how other top funds stacked up.
Bitcoin has dipped into a bear market. The token traded below $100,000 for the first time since June and fell almost 21% from an early October record of $126,000. From a historic liquidation event to trade jitters, here’s what has been dragging the cryptocurrency down.
3 things in tech
Mustafa Yalcin/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images; Jim Spellman/WireImage
Palantir CEO Alex Karp calls out his opps. After the company reported strong third-quarter earnings, Karp slammed short-sellers, like Michael Burry, who made a big bet against Palantir last quarter. “This behavior is egregious, and I’m going to be dancing around when it’s proven wrong,” Karp said. However, Palantir’s stock dropped as much as 9% after its earnings failed to generate fresh hype for the AI firm.
Got a PhD? Uber wants you! The company is offering gig work to train its AI, and for some of the tasks it needs highly educated candidates. (These will also pay more than Uber driving.) It’s part of Uber’s push to be more than a ride-hailing app and instead become a platform for work.
Thomson Reuters is playing aggressive defense. The company runs one of the largest hoards of legal data on the planet, and it wants to be the go-to AI platform for lawyers. Now, it’s plugging AI into tools that lawyers already use to fend off a potential threat from OpenAI.
3 things in business
Getty Images; Alyssa Powell/BI
It’s the age of the geriatric homebuyer. With so many young adults boxed out of the housing market by factors like student debt or high rent costs, silver-haired “repeat buyers” are swooping in instead. The result is a real–estate landscape dominated by old(er) people — and that could have steep wealth-building consequences for the young.
Elon Musk and Sam Altman are beefing — again. Their latest spat on X shows just how comfortable some high-powered CEOs have become with feuding in public. Historically, these disputes would happen behind closed doors, but some research suggests quarrelling in front of an audience could be good for their brand.
Trump says he’ll withhold SNAP benefits until the government shutdown ends. This comes after rulings from judges in Rhode Island and Massachusetts called on the administration to fund SNAP during the shutdown. Roughly 42 million Americans rely on these benefits to afford groceries.
In other news
Flexing and fitting in: It’s vest season on Wall Street.
Job hunting’s newest rules — and whether they actually work.
Travel companies warn what will happen if the government shutdown doesn’t end before Thanksgiving: chaos.
Sam Bankman-Fried, serving 25-year sentence, faces a skeptical appeals court as his lawyers ask for a retrial.
KPMG wants junior consultants to ditch the grunt work and hand it over to teams of AI agents.
Jon Stewart’s new deal shows Paramount isn’t just Trump TV.
The YouTuber behind the Timothée Chalamet look-alike contest is launching a marketing startup. Here are the details.
How ‘Never Trump’ Republicans built a profitable media company by turning on their cameras.
What’s happening today
Federal government shutdown officially becomes the longest ever.Trump addresses America Business Forum.Supreme Court hears challenges to Trump’s tariffs.McDonald’s, Snap, Inc., and Lyft report earnings.
Dan DeFrancesco, deputy executive editor and anchor, in New York. Hallam Bullock, senior editor, in London. Akin Oyedele, deputy editor, in New York. Grace Lett, editor, in New York. Amanda Yen, associate editor, in New York.
