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Browns DBs Coach Praises Denzel Ward's Character Following Record Extension

Add Denzel Ward's position coach to the list of people who are ecstatic to see the Cleveland Browns' superstar cornerback locked in for the next two years. Browns DBs coach Brandon Lynch opened up about Ward's recently signed two-year extension that made him the highest-paid cornerback by annual average value. Ward signed a two-year extension worth $62.2 million, a $31.1 million AAV.

Aug 7 • 11:03 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Small Business Employment Index Picks Back Up

NFIB’s July Jobs Report shows that the Small Business Employment Index rose after four consecutive months of decline, registering 102.1 in July after measuring 100.2 in June. The current reading is above the 2025 average of 101.2 and the historical average of 100.0. In July, 36% (seasonally adjusted) of small business owners reported job openings they could

Aug 7 • 10:51 AM EDT • Business • oklahomafarmreport.com

Klein ISD outscores state STAAR in science exam scores

Klein ISD students in fifth and eighth grade outscored state averages in the spring 2026 State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness science exams according to new state data.

Aug 6 • 1:01 PM EDT • Science • communityimpact.com

Elon Musk Has a Message for Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin After It Solved the New Glenn Mystery— 'Hope You...'

Elon Musk offers support to Blue Origin after launchpad explosion. Musk wishes quick recovery and backs collaboration.

Aug 6 • 7:31 AM EDT • Technology • benzinga.com

Longer careers may leave younger, disadvantaged workers spending more years in poor health

The average age of the German population is rising. Coupled with the growing labor shortage, these demographic trends pose major challenges for pension systems. According to proposals from the Pension ...

Aug 4 • 8:40 PM EDT • Health • medicalxpress.com

MrBeast Sales Slow, Angel Stock Falls, MUBI and Neon Look for Hits, and Will an NBA Franchise Set a Sales Record?

(Welcome to the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a newsletter on the entertainment industry and business strategy. I write a weekly Streaming Ratings Report and a bi-weekly strategy column, along with occasional deep dives into other topics, like today’s article. Please subscribe.) You probably remember egg prices spiking a few years ago. This led to a lot of debate between the pro-market/pro-competition/antitrust/Neo-Brandesian crowd and the center/center-right/center-left/abundance/libertarian crowd over the cause, whether it was the avian flu outbreak or whether industry consolidation led to price fixing, using avian flu as a convenient cover. Basel Musharbash wrote a whole investigation at BIG looking at it. Well, two years later, we have our answer: it was price fixing. The Justice Department found proof, via emails, of price fixing. Indeed, just the threat of an investigation brought prices down two years ago: I bring this up because at least half a dozen of my favorite political writers and pundits, who were skeptical about price fixing at the time, haven’t written any mea culpas on this issue. It’s really dispiriting and makes it much, much harder to trust their work on other issues. If you take a hard stand on an issue, then you get it wrong, you need to explain how and why you got it wrong. Or update your priors. This is how epistemological bubbles are formed! All of which is to say, it’s time for another installment of “What I Got Right, What I Got Wrong”. Last issue, I mostly focused on the “wrong” side of the equation, so today’s is a bit more balanced, but with one big mea culpa (though I still stand by my original concerns). Let’s dive right in! Subscribe CORRECTION: UFC Didn’t Release Subscriber Data (But Seems to Have Bragged About It Internally) In my analysis of the viewership of UFC Freedom 250, I wrote... “Paramount has also released datecdotes bragging about their subscriber numbers. Earlier this year, they claimed that the first UFC fight on Paramount+ brought in 1 million subscribers.” Well, that datecdote did not come from a PR rep, but from great reporting from James Faris at Business Insider. The actual quote was this: “Paramount’s flagship streaming service generated about a million new subscribers on the day of its first-ever UFC event, Paramount product chief Dane Glasgow told employees in a town hall on Tuesday morning, three staffers who attended the meeting told Business Insider.“ This wasn’t the biggest goof in the world; even Faris emphasized to me that this is more a “clarification” than a correction. Still, it sounds like, internally, the folks at Paramount were very happy about this result—and I’m guessing they were happy with this news getting out—even though the gains didn’t last through the quarter, dropping to 700K adds. RIGHT: MrBeast’s Struggles Continue... I’m very skeptical about MrBeast’s burgeoning media “empire” and, in particular, its $5 billion valuation, as I wrote earlier this year and last year. Sure enough, according to Business Insider, regarding its “booming” consumer products division_:_ “US sales volume grew 13% year-over-year in 2025, following a 33% leap the previous year, according to a presentation deck dated May 2026....A February 2025 investor deck viewed by Business Insider showed Feastables’ net revenue more than doubled in 2024 from 2023, to $215 million, and was forecast to grow 74% in 2025, to $375 million.” [Emphasis mine.] If you told investors that you projected 74% growth but delivered 13%,1 that’s not ideal. But it’s not just MrBeast. Logan Paul and KSI’s Prime had sales drop in half for their energy drinks. It’s one thing to build a successful entertainment company and an entirely different thing to succeed in the heavily-consolidated-but-also-very-competitive consumer packaged goods space! CPGs are dominated by a few firms with very wide moats compared to YouTube, which has few barriers to entry. These businesses require different skill sets and have completely different business environments. WRONG: Does the NBA Have an $8 Billion Bidder? Almost as soon as I published my article about the NBA’s finances, casting skepticism on NBA expansion, I saw this Front Office Sports headline: One group “claims to have already raised $8 billion” for the Vegas expansion team. I mean, wow. That’s just $2 billion less than what the Los Angeles Lakers were valued at when they were sold just last year. And they’re arguably the most popular team in the NBA. (Side note: the new owner is now under an investigation for fraud in how he went about financing the Lakers and the Dodgers purchases.) So much for the “dried up” language I used in that article. (This is why I usually stick to my “Entertainment Nuance Guy” tone in articles...) I went off old information—from April, when I read/heard about the NBA downplaying expansion efforts—instead of doing a quick double-check for new news. That said...if you read the article, the market for Seattle is “slow”, with just one reported bidder. So I wasn’t entirely off. This goof has annoyed me since I first published it, mainly because it undercut that article’s real point, which I stand by: NBA franchises are really overvalued right now. Now, I get why NBA teams are overvalued. When it comes to owning sports teams, it’s basically never wrong to assume that some rich person somewhere will care more about owning a team (or just being part of a group since they’re so expensive) than the actual financials. There are only so many teams to own, and opportunities to buy in preferred markets don’t come along very often. This explains why the teams sell for such high multiples (usually above a 10 to 12.5 revenue multiple, which is very high). You only need one person to overpay! Beyond the ultra-wealthy luxury good explanation, I worry NBA teams are becoming speculative assets. More and more private equity investors are buying into NBA teams. But the value, in owning a team, comes from selling it later, not any meaningful relationship to revenue or profit growth. In other words, the newer NBA owners are increasingly expecting someone later to buy their inflated asset. That’s not sound economics; that’s the “greater fool” theory at work.2 At some point, actually making money has to matter. Especially since revenue growth is now below the growth of the stock market. (And this matters because the NBA doesn’t have easy levers to pull to drastically lower their costs—half of their revenue has to go to players and then you actually have to run a team, including coaching, training, travel, media expenses, and more—or raise revenues aside from one-off expansions in America and overseas.) I just don’t see how investors make their money back buying NBA teams, except for selling at a higher price later on down the line. But if revenue/profit growth continues to slow, at some point, someone will be left holding the bag. RIGHT: Baseball and Basketball are about equally popular. Related to the above, I wanted to cite two quick pieces of evidence for one of my other theories: that the NBA and MLB are about as popular as each other, but the NBA gets much, much better media coverage. One YouGov survey has that fans prefer basketball to baseball by 52% to 48%, which I’m guessing is within the margin of error for that poll. That’s virtually even, meaning they’re about the same popularity. Over on NBC, a recent Red Sox-Yankees game averaged 4 million viewers, higher than Sunday Night Basketball’s average of 3.4 million on the same network. A Yankees-Dodgers game averaged 3.9 million two weeks ago. Not every game averages this much, but it shows you that baseball isn’t far off from basketball, depending on the matchup. Altogether, the NBA is just slightly more popular than baseball, but NBC is paying MLB a fraction of what they pay the NBA, a point I’ve made before. RIGHT: Angel, MUBI and Neon Updates... I’ve long been skeptical about many of Hollywood’s buzziest startups/smaller indie studios. It’s not that they don’t make great movies—films like Anora and Everything Everywhere All at Once are amazing—or that they’re not (rightfully) pushing the majors to make better films, but...they get a ton of hype, and that hype often doesn’t live up to the reality or difficulty in scaling up. Starting with MUBI, well, The Wall Street Journal wrote a feature on MUBI’s struggles last April, best summarized by the subheader “After Sequoia valued Mubi at $1 billion, a left-wing revolt sent the indie film company into a tailspin”. MUBI lost $7.3 million on $200 million in revenue in Q4 2025, but reportedly hit a record 1.7 million subscribers at the end of Q1. As for Neon, Department M purchased a “significant stake” in the company earlier this year. How much is that “stake” worth? According to Deadline, “No financial figures for the Neon-Department M deal were disclosed.” So...that’s not great! If it was a big valuation, we’d hear about. Also, I found this curious: “Both Neon and Department M already have separate partnerships with Qatar. The Qatar Film Committee has a slate deal in place with the former, and a biopic production pact with the latter.” Color me skeptical about much Middle Eastern investment dollars. See: LIV Golf. Finally, as for Angel (formerly Angel Studios), their stock very, very slightly popped last month after Young Washington ($20 million budget) which made $45 million in the US, but their stock is still way down from its opening. Smaller Updates RIGHT: The WGA should focus on antitrust concerns! I’ve been on this for years. Post-WGA/AMTPT deal in 2023, I wrote an article for the Ankler calling on the WGA to focus and organize against industry consolidation. Sure enough, the WGA filed a lawsuit against the Paramount-WBD merger, and people are organizing around this issue now. I wish this energy had coalesced earlier (specifically to lobby Washington much earlier), but better late than never! WRONG: Actually, the chip shortage might be due to market manipulation. In my last “Long Reads for the Long Summer” article, I shared an article about how LLMs are causing memory chip prices to spike, which will make all electronics more expensive. Well, turns out, three RAM manufacturers control 90% of the market, and now a private lawsuit accuses them of price-fixing. So yeah. WRONG/UPDATE: The Odyssey will hold! Two weeks ago, I wrote, “As of this moment, we haven’t had a super-blockbuster, though The Odyssey, Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Avengers: Doomsday could all cross the $500 million mark. (At this point, The Odyssey would need a very strong hold to get there.)” Well, it’s safe to say it’s going to have that hold! It only dropped 30% in weekend two and IMAX screenings are sold out all month. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is also off to a great start. RIGHT: People are rushing to get shows out yearly. I’ve long been bullish on yearly, weekly-released shows, and Leslie Goldberg at The Ankler wrote about how many people in town are now listening. WRONG: Mark Carney reverses Canada’s stance on homegrown production. After writing about Canada installing domestic production quotas, Canada has backed off. WRONG: I don’t trust Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s online “views”. When I originally wrote about the latest Spider-Man film’s record-breaking trailer, I thought this was just YouTube views, but after watching this Corridor Crew video and doing more research, well, it’s all social views of the trailer globally. Really? That stat includes TikTok, Reels and YouTube Shorts views. Basically, I don’t trust it anymore. (This film will probably set record, but I trust the pre-sales data more.) RIGHT: Celebrity Production companies are still struggling. I’ve written about this for years, but the company that I didn’t track was Kevin Hart’s HartBeat, which was valued at $650 million but is struggling now and might just end soon, especially after Kevin Hart pulled his endorsement deals. And Bad Robot is moving to NYC. CORRECTION: SpongeBob is a “second run” title. In my 2025 recap article, I had _SpongeBob SquarePants_labelled as a “library” title, when it is still a “second run” show, with new episodes still coming out on Nickelodeon. CORRECTION: In my last “What I Got Right, What I Got Wrong” update, I offered a correction from Doug Creutz and misspelled TD Cowen. Thanks, Grammarly! 1 Though he could have increased prices to make up for the gap, he couldn’t have increased them that much. 2 There’s a theory, which I think that Daryl Morey created and Bill Simmons popularized, that, to be successful building your team, you only need a handful of bad GMs in the league to take advantage of. To be clear, Daryl Morey’s theory was also for signing bad contracts, that you could always get out of bad contracts. Basically, there’s always someone who will make a bad trade. It’s not the same exact thing, but similar enough to the Greater Fool Theory that I really like it.

Aug 4 • 11:55 AM EDT • Entertainment • entertainment.substack.com

U.S. Small Business Employment Landscape Remains Steady

Workers experience notable increases in weekly earnings and hours worked growth in JulyROCHESTER, N.Y., Aug. 04, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- According to the Paychex Small Business Employment Watch, the pace of U.S. small business job growth (99.23) in July remained steady and was slightly above average jobs index (99.20) for the first half of the year, signaling a steady employment environment among businesses with fewer than 50 employees. Although hourly earnings growth for small business workers

Aug 4 • 8:30 AM EDT • Business • finance.yahoo.com

U.S. Small Business Sales Hold Steady in July, Extending 2026's Modest Growth

Fiserv Small Business Index finds sales increased 1.6% year over year, driven by higher average transaction values as consumers remained selective in retail and dining spending MILWAUKEE, Aug. 03, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ: FISV), a leading global provider of payments and

Aug 3 • 8:00 AM EDT • Business • investors.fiserv.com

Panama: Haemophilus influenzae meningitis case reported in Veraguas Health Region

The Veraguas Health Region, located in the central-western region of Panama, confirmed a case of meningitis caused by the Haemophilus influenzae bacteria in a 12-year-old student from La Primavera School, diagnosed on July 29. The patient remains hospitalized, is receiving appropriate treatment, and is in stable clinical condition. The regional health director of Veraguas, Xavier A. Torres Domínguez, reported that, once the diagnosis was confirmed, the Ministry of Health (Minsa), in coordination with the Social Security Fund (CSS), immediately activated the epidemiological investigation and health response protocols established for this type of event. Canada: Haemophilus influenzae type B outbreak in Calgary As part of the actions implemented, the Epidemiology teams carried out the identification and monitoring of the patient’s close contacts, applying the corresponding preventive measures to reduce the risk of transmission and safeguard the health of the educational community. Health authorities explained that meningitis caused by Haemophilus influenzae is a bacterial disease that requires timely medical attention. In that regard, they urged the population to immediately seek medical attention if they experience symptoms such as high fever, severe headache, stiff neck, vomiting, drowsiness, or altered mental status. They also reiterated that vaccination is the main preventive measure against this disease, and therefore called on parents and guardians to verify that their children’s immunization schedules are complete, in accordance with the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI). Outbreak News Today is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe

Aug 1 • 6:29 PM EDT • Health • outbreaknewstoday.substack.com

In deal for reliable arm Dean Kremer, Twins, Orioles both get what they need: MLB Trade Grades

Dean Kremer has had an awful season, but a long track record says he should bounce back to being reliably average.

Aug 1 • 9:18 AM EDT • Sports • nytimes.com

Science Inquiry Comes Alive for Jacket Middle Schoolers

Snails, sidewalks and Double Stuff Oreos... At Partnership Middle School, instructors are finding innovative ways to help students connect the classroom to what they see in the real world every day. By integrating hands-on experiences and scientific investigations into weekly lessons, 6th and 7th grade science teachers push their classes to explore the curriculum standards through the lens of critical thinking, communication with their peers, experimentation, and scientific inquiry. Last week, two different approaches for two different grade levels saw Jacket teachers ignite the same spark for learning. On Tuesday, 6th graders in Lydia Jones' science class took their lessons outside as they explored the school grounds to identify living and non-living things. Despite the warm temperatures, they engaged in discovering unexpected objects on the campus and connecting that to what they learned in class about the criteria for what qualifies a thing as "living". Ms. Jones tasked students with walking the grounds and listing as many living and non-living things they could find in just a few minutes. Students spotted a fire hydrant, construction vehicles, grass, trees, soccer equipment, rocks, sidewalks, and even a snail hidden in the plants. After they finished the exploration, students returned to the regular classroom to discuss their results and whether their objects were classified correctly. On Thursday, 7th graders in Omini Parks' science class participated in their first lab of the semester as they explored and identified the physical properties of a favorite snack -- Oreos. Ms. Parks identified the class objective before the lab activity began by writing the academic standard on the dry erase board in a declarative statement: "I can collect and evaluate qualitative data to describe substances using physical properties." Students watched a video about how Oreo sandwich cookies are made, and then engaged in a question and answer discussion to give observations on the manufacturing process, review various types of physical properties and their scientific terminology, and talk generally about how the lab inquiry would work. The Q&A ended with a predictable question from students... "Will we be able to eat the Oreos?" The hands-on lab exercise required the 7th grade scientists to observe and record the differences between regular Oreos and the Double Stuff variety based on their physical properties. They followed the instructions in their lab brief to chart a comparison between the two types of cookies by observing properties with their magnifying lenses, measuring the height and diameter of both, and weighing the cookies with and without their filling. The activity let students put their lessons about physical properties into practice with real objects while also practicing vocabulary and writing skills to record their observations and using math skills from the last school year like taking measurements and calculating averages. Of course, they ended the lab by charting the taste of the cookies as well! These types of activities allow students to see the science standards they are learning come to life in the real world and engage with the content in new ways. Beyond that, they serve as a foundation for encouraging and growing scientific inquiry. Later in the school year, students will use the scientific method they are learning to complete science projects that require real research and the ability to explain and answer questions about their process and results. At the school-level competitive Science Fair last year, 41 Partnership students earned a place in the 2026 regional Science Fair held at MSU. From there, 14 advanced to the State Science Fair conducted at Northeast Mississippi Community College in April.

Aug 1 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • starkvillesd.com

Super Mario Sunshine Is Coming to Switch 2. It's Time to Embrace This Truly Weird Game

In a world that increasingly favors perfect averages and hyper-smooth edges, Sunshine’s jagged, funky design is a much-needed breath of fresh air.

Jul 31 • 4:44 PM EDT • Technology • pcmag.com

Survey: Small business optimism picks up in Iowa, nation

Many small businesses around Iowa and the nation are seeing “encouraging developments” while also experiencing challenging times, according to a recent survey. The NFIB (National Federation of Independent Business ) Small Business Optimism Index rose 2.1 points in June to 97.4, nearing its 52-year average of 98. Expectations for better business conditions and real sales […]

Jul 31 • 8:35 AM EDT • Business • quadcitiesbusiness.com

The Federal Government’s $33.6 Trillion Health Care Problem

The Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) latest report on federal health-insurance subsidies estimates the federal government will subsidize health coverage by approximately $2.4 trillion in 2026, by $3.9 trillion by 2036, and by a total of $33.6 trillion over the intervening decade. For all the focus on health care costs in the United States, CBO’s new […]

Jul 30 • 8:00 PM EDT • Health • americanactionforum.org

Mortgage rates rise to one-year high

The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage rose this week to 6.66%, according to the latest Freddie Mac data released Thursday. That is up from last week's reading of 6.58%.

Jul 30 • 12:37 PM EDT • Business • foxbusiness.com

German top two divisions record attendance record of 21.4 million

Germany's Bundesliga and second division sold a record 21,404,258 tickets in the past season for an average of 34,974, the league said on Thursday. The Bundesliga said that top flight ticket sales rose by 9.

Jul 30 • 6:33 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Flyers Rank Below Average in NHL Contract Efficiency Once Again

Jul 30 • 2:14 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Sharks' Macklin Celebrini becomes NHL's highest-paid player with 5-year, $94M extension

Celebrini $18.8 million salary cap hit takes the title from Leo Carlsson, who will earn an average of $18 million a season over the next five years.

Jul 29 • 10:56 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

This Congress is one of the oldest yet. Most Americans think that’s a problem, a new CNN poll shows

The current Congress is among the oldest in US history — a trend that is expected to accelerate, especially in the Senate.

Jul 29 • 6:00 AM EDT • Politics • cnn.com

Oprah Winfrey says ‘life starts at 44’—and research proves she’s right: the average founder starts their business after 40

Billionaire Oprah Winfrey says she “locked in” in her 40s—as most CEOs and founders are middle-aged.

Jul 27 • 11:35 AM EDT • Business • fortune.com

Pennsylvania ACA health insurers propose double-digit premium increases for 2027

Nearly all health insurance companies that sell individual plans on Pennsylvania’s Affordable Care Act marketplace are asking for average premium increases ranging from 10.5% to as high as 41%

Jul 25 • 6:00 AM EDT • Health • wesanews.org

Requested 2027 Affordable Care Act rate increases average 17.1% in Pennsylvania

Health insurers serving Pennsylvanians with coverage under the Affordable Care Act are proposing to increase premiums by an average of 17.1% for individuals...

Jul 24 • 6:00 AM EDT • Health • post-gazette.com

Pennsylvania ACA health insurers propose double-digit premium increases for 2027

The total average premium rate increase request in the individual market is 17%. Some insurers like Ambetter are requesting an average increase of 40%.

Jul 23 • 5:37 PM EDT • Health • whyy.org

Fidelity says 2026 retirees may spend $185,500 on healthcare. One category may push those costs higher

A 65-year-old who retires in 2026 may spend an average of $185,500 on health and medical expenses in retirement, according to Fidelity Investments.

Jul 22 • 8:35 AM EDT • Health • cnbc.com

Retirees may need nearly $186,000 for healthcare

On average, a 65-year-old who leaves the workforce this year may need $185,500 in savings to cover out-of-pocket healthcare expenses throughout retirement, according to Fidelity's annual survey.

Jul 22 • 8:16 AM EDT • Health • finance.yahoo.com

Americans far more likely to view politics as greatest threat to safety, study finds

New survey reveals one in 10 Americans identify politics as biggest risk they face in life – 10 times the global average

Jul 22 • 5:00 AM EDT • Politics • theguardian.com

World Cup Final Averaged More Than 61 Million Viewers

The final posted the largest U.S. television audience since the Super Bowl.

Jul 21 • 6:35 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Instagram will let users endlessly swap the audio on old posts

Recent features make sense for creators — not so much average users

Jul 21 • 12:15 PM EDT • Technology • theverge.com

UFC Freedom 250 Fails to Knock Out The Ratings

(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) If UFC fans wanted one image to say, “Hey, Paramount+ is crushing it with their UFC rights deal,” I could provide that image. Here it is: (Reminder: this is my creation of the Nielsen Top 30, since Nielsen doesn’t combine the lists or include sports. I take all three lists and combine them. Some streaming TV shows probably have higher ratings than many of the films on this list.) Look at that! UFC Freedom 250 is number one! It topped the Nielsen “Top 30” list for shows and films that made the top ten the week of 15-June. So if you’re a UFC fan or supporter of Paramount+, that’s the good news for you this week. This program topped the ratings charts for one week. Everything else is bad news, or at least a huge caveat to that story, which I’ll explain today in the first part of this week’s Streaming Ratings Report—for the weeks of 8-June and 15-June—which is a double issue since I’ve been writing on a bunch of topics recently. UFC Freedom 250 is one of the biggest streaming events of the year, and super relevant to Paramount+’s strategy, so it merited its own article. Let’s dive in! (Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Luminate’s Top Ten Data, JustWatch and Reelgood interest data, Samba TV household viewership, company datecdotes, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen’s data covers the weeks of June 8th to June 21st 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Check Out My Interview on UFC 250 at MMA Draw After you read this article, if you want even more thoughts on UFC and Paramount-Skydance/Paramount+, I did a written interview with MMA Draw. They asked me to answer some questions about UFC Freedom 250, and I was happy to chat with them. Find it here: [ The MMA Draw Newsletter Did Paramount really overpay for the UFC? What the data tells us so far If you know the history of American television, you also know that combat sports is often a leading indicator of the future… Read more a day ago · 10 likes · 1 comment · Nate Wilcox and Zach Arnold ](https://www.themmadraw.com/p/did-paramount-really-overpay-for?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web) I never thought I’d need a combat sports newsletter in my life, but the good folks at MMA Draw publish an excellent one on UFC, MMA, pro wrestling, boxing and more, analyzing both the sports themselves and the politics, economics and antitrust issues that impact them. Check the article and their newsletter out! Paramount+ Has Its Best Sporting Event of All Time…But Was It Worth It? Before we look at the UFC Freedom 250 data in particular, let’s talk about what we can’t say. Namely, let’s start with the lack of comparisons. First off, I’d love to put a chart out comparing this fight to past UFC fights on Paramount+…but we don’t have the data. This is the first time we’ve gotten Nielsen data about a Paramount+ UFC fight. As far as I can tell, Paramount provided data for the first fight, but it was a proprietary datecdote (saying it had “an average minute audience” of 5 million “views”) and then, for two fights, we got the linear viewership numbers when they aired on CBS, but no streaming data. Everything else was crickets. We also can’t compare this fight to other fights/combat sports on streaming, in particular the MMA and boxing, because Netflix also didn’t use Nielsen to track those events, opting for TVision and VideoAmp, respectively. (This isn’t Paramount’s fault, but does still suck.) We also can’t compare to UFC’s fights that used to be on ESPN+, since we don’t have any data for that, plus Disney+ didn’t have marquee fights. The comparisons would not be apples-to-apples. Can we compare to past Pay-Per-View fights? Absolutely not. The comparisons would absolutely NOT be apples-to-apples. That didn’t stop Paramount+, though, who bragged that their UFC events have reached drastically more people than past PPV fights. Duh. Sorry, but I gotta make this point again. A basic tenet of economics is that the cheaper something becomes, the more people consume or buy it. That’s Econ 101. (Sometimes pundits call things “Econ 101” that are actually like Econ 210 or even PhD-level economics, but no, this is really like first or second class basic economics.) Yet I still see one analytics firm consistently say that more people watch films on streaming than PVOD proves streaming which means that the streaming window is more valuable than the PVOD window. No, it’s not! Same thing here. Pay-Per-View events back in the day could be really, really, really expensive! So whole groups of people pitched in to buy them. That increased the perceived value of, say, the Mike Tyson fight. Or a UFC numbered event. So yes, the fact that Paramount+ makes numbered UFC fights essentially “free” if you’re already a Paramount+ member means consumption will go up. Obviously. Same for Netflix and their boxing matches. They’re talking about fights that used to cost consumers, in some cases, $50 in 1996…which is over $100 in today’s dollars. Over 1.6 million people paid that to watch the Tyson-Holyfield fight! Again, streaming is essentially “free”. Or $10 to $20, depending on what streamer we’re talking about and what tier you’re on. No wonder more people are “watching”. (Plus, Nielsen’s out-of-home viewing also helps these numbers.) UFC Freedom 250 Did Well…But I Have A Lot of Worries So what can we compare the fights to? Well, the good news is Nielsen put out that the fight averaged 7.0 million viewers for UFC Freedom 250, which is a solid number for a fight. We also know the length, at roughly 4 and a half hours. (I saw different run times, but this seems to be the consensus considering it started at 8 pm, had a delay and then finished after midnight on the East Coast. If you assume a shorter run time, then yes, the total hours viewed would go down.) That means I have the two numbers needed to add this to my Nielsen database. And then…I can compare this viewership to the NFL: And, uh, not great. But also within striking distance, mainly because the runtime for this event was so long. I’d also add that this event had viewership equal to a regular season NFL game on streaming, but if anything, it was more comparable to an NFL playoff or Super Bowl-esque event. And you can compare viewership to the top football games on broadcast, cable and streaming, and it’s not impressive at all: We can also compare it to other sports that week, including the NBA Finals and start of the World Cup: Again, not great. The NBA generated roughly four times as many average viewers each game for its NBA Finals. The World Cup has similarly big numbers. Also, that’s just a tiny fraction of the 25 most watched sporting events each week. The NBA, NHL and FIFA World Cup had many, many more games racking up hours. We could also compare this to other streaming programs to get an idea of “is this a good investment?” and here is how it ranks compared to other top Paramount+ programs: The worry here? Well, unlike scripted programming, which has rewatchability, older fights/sporting events have very little library value. Very, very few people are rewatching these fights, especially years from now. Paramount has also released datecdotes bragging about their subscriber numbers. Earlier this year, they claimed that the first UFC fight on Paramount+ brought in 1 million subscribers. Then, in their quarterly earnings report, they only ended up with 700K subs. Not great! They claimed they dropped lower-value international subscribers, but that’s why I tend to discount subscriber additions when they’re leaked to the press.1 I expect we may see a bump again for UFC Freedom 250, but I’d caution using subscriber growth so soon after these events to judge the success, since new subs with high churn (see Peacock) aren’t great either. Also, analysts often want to attribute all subscriber growth to their favorite/pet show, and that just doesn’t make sense. The biggest caveat for UFC Freedom 250 and Paramount’s very first UFC marquee event is that these could be high watermarks for the sport. UFC Freedom 250 had an incredible amount of earned media coverage compared to most UFC fights. I mean, it had wall-to-wall national news coverage in the lead up to the event. (The first fight also had a lot of promotion from Paramount since it was first.) Other fights could reach this bar—say the Conor McGregor return to the Octagon—but they’ll be fewer and far between. Was This Deal Worth It? All to ask: is this Paramount deal worth it? In this case, I think the UFC Freedom 250 numbers are more distracting than helpful. This fight did well and compares well to other top sporting events. But we know that the first marquee event was at least a third smaller, if Paramount’s own data is to be believed. And it’s likely the other fights are much, much, much smaller. And then you get to the paycheck that Paramount-Skydance paid. FIFA’s World Cup cost about the same for Fox, but clearly generated multiples more total viewership. (Though it’s only every four years.) The NBA is much more expensive, but until the playoffs, they likely didn’t pay for itself. Even still, Disney, NBCUniversal and Amazon Prime Video likely overpaid. So, in that context, the NBA may be an overpay that makes the UFC look not so bad. But two overpays don’t make an underpay, to paraphrase the old cliché about wrongs and rights. And looking at UFC Freedom 250 as the likely ceiling of MMA on Paramount+, Paramount-Skydance likely paid too much. Share 1 I would love regular reports on subscriber additions by programs, but as is, it’s mostly leaked or rumored in haphazard ways.

Jul 20 • 6:48 PM EDT • Entertainment • entertainment.substack.com

NEW NFIB REPORT: Texas Small Businesses Report Insurance Challenges Five Points Worse Than National Average

State-specific report finds insurance affordability and availability concerns are five points worse in Texas than across the country

Jul 20 • 3:55 PM EDT • Business • nfib.com

Shaky political "science": breakdown of the peer review process

[This article is the latest in our “Shaky Political Science” series. In our 38 page report, “Shaky political ‘science’ misses mark on ranked choice voting,” released in December 2025, we examined over 40 studies focused on ranked choice voting (RCV). Many of these studies suffered from puzzling research methodologies, poorly constructed surveys, unrealistic simulated elections, cherry picked data and faulty analyses that often were contradicted by results from real-world elections (a link to our full paper is here). Here are links to the first four articles in our series: the first one summarizing the overall results of our report; the second one analyzed a study co-authored by University of Minnesota academic Larry Jacobs, which was one of the most error-prone of all the research we reviewed in our report; a third article showing an admirable example of two political scientists holding two other political scientists accountable for their flawed, sloppy research; and a fourth article that analyzed seven studies sponsored by New America’s political reform program that deployed flawed methodology based on “simulated” elections instead of real-world elections, which when combined with some basic misunderstandings of RCV, produced odd and misleading results]. In this fifth article in our “Shaky Political Science” series, we examine two flawed studies on the impact of RCV on voter turnout authored by San Francisco State University professor Jason McDaniel. McDaniel’s research in these two papers stands out for its puzzling methodology, inadequate and cherry-picked data, and faulty analyses that not only misunderstands ranked choice voting but reflects a basic misunderstanding of politics in general. The first of the McDaniel studies actually passed through a peer review process and then was subsequently published by the Journal of Urban Affairs, despite its obvious errors. It is perplexing that a jury of peer political scientists did not catch the errors and send it back to McDaniel for a rewrite or outright rejection. This calls into question the credibility of the peer review process itself. The peer review process is supposed to represent the intellectual pinnacle of the profession – a way for academics to certify the quality of each other’s work, and to act as a check against sloppy research. In the case of the McDaniel study, the peer review process failed. Yet his flawed study has been cited dozens of times by other political scientists in their own flawed works — an unvirtuous circle of academic research. Here is the first Jason McDaniel study that we analyzed: “Writing the Rules to Rank the Candidates: Examining the Impact of Instant-Runoff Voting on Racial Group Turnout in San Francisco Mayoral Elections,” by Jason McDaniel, 2016, Journal of Urban Affairs. This study covered San Francisco’s use of ranked choice voting (RCV) in mayoral elections, purporting to show that RCV reduces voter turnout overall, increases voter errors, and has a negative impact on “marginal populations,” i.e. racial minorities, mainly as the result of the alleged complexity of RCV asking voters to rank candidates and having to be familiar with multiple candidates and related dynamics. McDaniel reached these conclusions by examining five San Francisco mayoral elections taking place in odd years (i.e. where there are no federal or state races on the ballot) from 1995 to 2011, comparing three earlier non-RCV races (in 1995, 1999 and 2003) with the later two RCV races (in 2007 and 2011). Only two RCV races were studied, and as McDaniel acknowledged, only the contest in 2011 was “competitive” (that contest in 2007 was the first mayoral election using RCV, and incumbent mayor Gavin Newsom won easily in the first round of counting, earning 74% of first choices and far ahead of the second place candidate who had just 6.3% of first choices). Yet even the allegedly competitive contest in 2011was won by an incumbent with a landslide margin of nearly 20 points. No other elections were studied by McDaniel, even though San Francisco elects 17 other offices besides mayor with RCV, including the 11 seats on the Board of Supervisors (the name for the city council) in even years, and six other citywide offices in odd years. Previous academic research has found that competitive elections can stimulate greater voter involvement and higher turnout. For unexplained reasons, this study ignored at least 34 other RCV races between the years 2004 to 2011, many of which were very competitive and had high voter turnout. Instead, McDaniel’s analysis based its conclusions on data from only a single, marginally-competitive mayor’s race using RCV. These 2007 and 2011 mayoral elections were the only two RCV elections that McDaniel used as the sole basis for his small data set to determine the impact of RCV on voter turnout. Despite having no meaningful data to inform his study, McDaniel nonetheless concluded that RCV lowered turnout when compared to the previous three mayoral non-RCV elections using two-round runoffs. Then, using the same inadequate database of San Francisco elections, McDaniel also found that “Instant-runoff voting is associated with a significant decline in Black voter turnout and White voter turnout…On average, Black voter turnout decreases by 18 points and White voter turnout decreases by 16 points …” But how could he credibly arrive at that conclusion when his study was based on voter turnout in two RCV contests that were not even remotely competitive? Beyond that, McDaniel tacitly admits that the key determining factor driving Black voter turnout was not RCV vs non-RCV elections, but the presence of a viable Black candidate. McDaniel wrote, “Black voter turnout was about 17 percentage points higher for the two elections that featured an African American candidate compared to the three elections that did not” — but one of those three elections did not use RCV. The same dynamic was present for White voter turnout, in which higher turnout was not correlated with RCV vs non-RCV elections, but the presence of a viable White candidate. Beyond that, McDaniel’s voter turnout results, whether correlated with the race of the candidates or RCV vs non-RCV elections, showed no clear patterns. In his Figure 1, he shows low Asian voter turnout in the non-RCV elections in 1999 and 2003 when there was no viable Asian candidate running, but in the 2007 mayoral election using RCV, there is still no viable Asian candidate, yet Asian turnout increases dramatically. For Latinos, voter turnout is virtually the same in 1999 (no viable Latino candidate, non-RCV elections), 2003 (leading Latino candidate, non-RCV elections), 2007 (no viable Latino candidate, RCV elections) and 2011 (leading Latino candidate, RCV elections). Meanwhile White voter turnout increased dramatically from a low in the 2007 mayoral election, in which the leading candidate was a white incumbent, to the 2011 election in which there were no leading white candidates that finished any higher than sixth place with 5.6% of the vote. Clearly other factors were determining voter turnout than either the race of the candidates or RCV vs non-RCV elections. Despite these inconsistent findings, McDaniel boldly marches forth to render conclusions about the impact of RCV on different groups of racial voters, even though his conclusions are not remotely supported by his data. This looks like the worst kind of “data cherry picking” to cover up a puzzling conclusion based on a poor data set involving only two RCV elections, neither of which were remotely competitive. McDaniel’s cherry picking didn’t stop there. In calculating voter turnout for the three non-RCV mayoral elections in 1995, 1999 and 2003, he failed to mention that in each of these years there was a two-round runoff election, with a first round election in November in which no candidate garnered a winning majority of the vote, followed by the decisive runoff in December. So there were two non-RCV elections in each election year. But McDaniel only decided to include one of the two elections in his data set, apparently the December runoff in each year (which had higher turnout in two out of the three mayor’s races, and lower turnout in the third). So he ignored the November 1995 election, the November 1999 election when turnout was only 45 percent, and the November 2003 election when turnout was only 45.7 percent. This is flawed methodology based on blatant cherry picking, since McDaniel simply omitted three elections worth of data that did not fit within his frame. His study should never have made it through a peer review process, and it is an embarrassment to political science that not only was it approved for publication, but it has been uncritically cited by dozens of other political scientists. Share A “study” without wider context or credible data Lacking a data set that included even a single competitive RCV mayoral race, McDaniel declared that RCV lowered voter turnout in 2011, when turnout was 42.5 percent. But he also ignored -- or did not realize -- that voter turnout in mayoral elections during 2011 had sharply declined in all big cities, including far more steeply in nearby Los Angeles and other cities. In fact, San Francisco’s election in 2011 had the second highest turnout of any mayoral election in the nation’s 22 largest cities from 2008-2011. Was 2011 just a particularly low turnout year all across the country, perhaps because the country was still reeling from the aftermath of the housing market collapse in 2008-2010? McDaniel ignored this factor and did not search for alternative explanations beyond his flawed thesis. Furthermore, while McDaniel suggested that RCV leads to more “overvotes” – which is an invalidated ballot in which a voter, in either a non-RCV or RCV race, makes a mistake and selects two candidates for a single choice – he failed to address that in the June 2012 US Senate primary contest, which used the typical “one-choice” plurality method and did not use RCV, there was more than five times as many overvotes in San Francisco and Oakland than in the RCV mayoral elections in those cities. Additionally, turnout had been significantly higher and more representative in RCV elections for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors races -- that McDaniel didn’t even bother to study -- as compared to previous “delayed two-round runoffs” for those offices, often higher by as much as 40% in the RCV races. Perhaps the most surprising irony was that an earlier study co-authored by McDaniel (Overvoting and the Equality of Voice under Instant-Runoff Voting in San Francisco by Francis Neely and Jason McDaniel, 2015, California Journal of Politics and Policy) found that overvotes are often more common in lower-income precincts, but that the pattern of overvoting is similar in both RCV and non-RCV contests. Wrote Neely and McDaniel: “[Overvote] errors appear to be a function of complexity in general and not IRV per se…. the pattern of overvoting is similar in both IRV and non-IRV contests…Even among votes cast in a top-of-the-ticket race like U.S. Senate, overvoting occurs in an uneven fashion” (IRV, or ‘instant runoff voting,’ is another name for ranked choice voting in single-winner contests). So McDaniel not only contradicted his own conclusion in his earlier study with Neely, but the earlier study had been an important corrective for one of the most frequently made mistakes made by anti-RCV political scientists – a continual failure to provide crucial context by pairing a comparative analysis of real world RCV elections with an analysis of real world plurality or other electoral methods. Unfortunately McDaniel’s earlier study does not get cited much by other researchers, and McDaniel did not even cite it in his own flawed study analyzed above. Incredibly, McDaniel cherrypicked McDaniel, even as his flawed study has been cited dozens of times. Despite being a textbook example of poor political “science,” featuring both inadequate as well as cherrypicked data, the shelf life of McDaniel’s study has been extended endlessly by other political scientists and media outlets who have cited it uncritically. Equally troubling, the Journal of Urban Affairs put this paper through its peer review process and published it despite its numerous flaws. McDaniel gets it wrong, Part II Not content with producing one shoddy, confused paper, McDaniel produced another one a few years later, here is the link: Electoral Rules and Voter Turnout in Mayoral Elections: An Analysis of Ranked-Choice Voting by Jason McDaniel. San Francisco State Univ. (McDaniel, 2019). In this paper, McDaniel extended his previous flawed research focused on San Francisco, about voter turnout and voter impact, to multiple RCV cities through the 2018 elections. In his data set he included San Francisco, Minneapolis, St Paul, Oakland, Berkeley, San Leandro and Santa Fe. He then compared their turnout in mayoral elections to non-RCV cities, and to mayoral elections in those cities held before first RCV usage, and concluded “a significant decrease in voter turnout of approximately 3–5 percentage points in RCV cities after the implementation of RCV.” But he replicated many of the same mistakes as his first study presented above. While in this study McDaniel attempted to distinguish between various factors, such as odd year vs. even year elections, competitive races vs. noncompetitive, contests with open seats and other factors, the analysis is superficial and inadequate. He attempts to incorporate so many often-conflicting variables that his conclusions are once again unsupported by the actual data, and ultimately unconvincing (this second study never underwent a peer review process). For example, McDaniel declared that for RCV cities “in elections that are more competitive than average (margin of victory less than 20%), there is no significant RCV effect on voter turnout.” Yet McDaniel is a professor in a city, San Francisco, in which the 2018 special election using RCV to fill a mayoral vacancy was exceedingly close, decided by a margin of only one percentage point, and resulted in the second highest turnout in San Francisco history for a mayoral election. Illustrating the complexity involved in assessing the critical factors in turnout, that special election was held on the same election day as federal and state offices, which tends to boost turnout. Yet more voters participated in that RCV mayoral election than voted on the same day in the non-RCV primary for governor in which former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom was running. Even more puzzling, in this study McDaniel inaccurately cited his own previous study from 2015 with Neely. McDaniel wrote, “Neely and McDaniel (2015) examine individual ballot image files within a natural experiment, and find higher rates of ballot errors in RCV elections compared to non-RCV elections” (emphasis added). However, we quoted from that 2015 study several paragraphs above, and in actual fact Neely and McDaniel actually concluded the opposite -- that the pattern of overvoting – which is the most common form of ballot error – is similar in both RCV and non-RCV contests. McDaniel also ignored the fact that in Bay Area RCV elections held in even years – at the same time as federal and state elections, when turnout is highest -- the “undervote” (that is, the dropoff in ballots cast for governor or mayor) has declined, which contradicts his thesis that the act of ranking ballots in RCV elections is too complex and presents a barrier for certain demographics of voters. To his credit, McDaniel actually acknowledged another contradiction in his own paper, which found a negative RCV turnout effect in some odd-year elections but not others, admitting that “may present a challenge to the theory that increased complexity [from RCV] will have a marginal negative effect on voter turnout.” But he tried to wallpaper over that contradiction by blaming it on an unlikely source -- bad election administration. McDaniels wrote, “This would suggest that the negative impact of RCV on voter participation may be alleviated by high quality election administration,” without presenting any data or even anecdotes to support such an unfounded theory. While competent election administration of any election, whether RCV or non-RCV, is crucially important, there is no credible research that supports the far-fetched notion that the quality of election administration has much of an impact on voter turnout in US elections, whether using RCV or otherwise. Upgrade to a $5 subscription The unvirtuous circle of academic research It is puzzling how McDaniel’s first study could have survived the peer review process for the Journal of Urban Affairs. The mistakes in McDaniel’s first study above should have been obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of ranked choice voting as well as elections in general, and elections in San Francisco specifically. It undermines faith in the credibility of the peer review process to think that a jury of peer political scientists did not catch the egregious errors and reject McDaniel’s sloppy research and paper. And it remains a black mark on political science that this thoroughly discredited study has been cited dozens of times by other researchers. Indeed, in our research paper it became apparent that many political scientists cite each other’s flawed research to pad their list of citations and to legitimize their own flawed research, creating an unvirtuous circle of political science. More broadly, McDaniel’s voter turnout studies, like other studies evaluating RCV’s impact on turnout, lacked a recognition that no credible opinion or research can claim that RCV increases voter turnout merely because so many voters are excited to vote for their favorite candidates instead of “lesser evil” candidates without worrying about spoilers. Instead, with respect to turnout, the advantage of RCV has always been that, in most places where it has been used, it has eliminated a pre-November primary or post-November runoff, which usually saw about half the turnout of the November general election. This is especially true during even years when there are state and federal elections on the ballot which substantially drive turnout more than local contests. Any study that does not adequately account for this non-November primary/runoff vs November general election dynamic, or odd year vs even year election factors, is simply not credible. Both of McDaniel’s studies largely failed on those grounds. Steven Hill and Paul Haughey Share Upgrade to a $5 subscription Thanks for reading DemocracySOS…your digital portal for the pro-democracy movement. Subscribe for only $5 per month to receive full benefits and to support our work. Subscribe

Jul 20 • 9:29 AM EDT • Science • democracysos.substack.com

Rich politicians loaning money to their own campaigns puts the average Oklahoman's interests at risk

“Be afraid. Be very afraid” seems like a fitting slogan for Oklahoma elections this year.

Jul 20 • 6:29 AM EDT • Politics • oklahomavoice.com

Gas prices back at $4 a gallon

The average price US drivers pay for gas hit $4 a gallon on Monday, only the second time it has reached that benchmark since the war in Iran disrupted global oil supplies.

Jul 20 • 4:51 AM EDT • Business • cnn.com

Electric cars became cheaper in Germany despite rising average prices

Models of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) became more affordable in Germany ​between 2020 and 2025, data ‌from research organizations the International Council on Clean Transportation and Fraunhofer ISI showed.

Jul 19 • 10:05 PM EDT • Business • reuters.com

Manchester flower shop feels impact of high gas prices

Jacques Flower Shop in Manchester is one of the many small businesses in the Granite State that say conflicts thousands of miles away are impacting their prices. According to AAA, gas in New Hampshire crept up another two cents overnight, bringing the state average to $3.98 per gallon.

Jul 18 • 6:52 PM EDT • Business • wmur.com

Tickets For World Cup Final—The Most Expensive U.S. Sporting Event Ever—Rise 46%

The cheapest tickets for the final on the secondary market were just shy of $7,000 on Wednesday, with an average ticket price of $11,327, which marked the most expensive sporting event in U.S. history.

Jul 18 • 12:11 PM EDT • Sports • forbes.com

Former Super Bowl champ calls Patriots QB Drake Maye 'average'

Former All-Pro safety T.J. Ward argued that MVP runner-up Drake Maye is an "average" quarterback.

Jul 18 • 12:04 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

World Cup final on track to be most expensive sporting event ever

The average price of World Cup final tickets is $12,751, more than $2,000 higher than the previous record set by the 2024 Super Bowl.

Jul 17 • 10:33 AM EDT • Sports • nytimes.com

Russian troops live an average of 30 minutes on battlefield: CIA chief

John Ratcliffe said the deadly conditions have been spurred mainly by Ukraine's AI-powered drones. He urged the US to learn quickly from Kyiv.

Jul 17 • 12:06 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com

CNBC rated Ohio 'Top State for Business.' Here's what that means — and what it doesn't.

Ohio Republicans are touting a CNBC business rating, but one of its authors says it doesn't mean that life is great for average Ohioans.

Jul 16 • 4:00 AM EDT • Business • ohiocapitaljournal.com

ABB to Buy Rotork in $5.5 Billion Deal to Strengthen Electrification Business

Under the agreement, shareholders would receive $6.81 for each Rotork share, a 60% premium to the company’s three-month average share price.

Jul 16 • 2:01 AM EDT • Business • wsj.com

Small Business Optimism Picks Up in June

The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index rose 2.1 points in June to 97.4, nearing its 52-year average of 98.0. Expectations for better business conditions and real sales expectations improved substantially and primarily drove the rise in the Index. The Uncertainty Index fell 2 points from May to 89, remaining well above its historical average of

Jul 14 • 4:18 PM EDT • Business • oklahomafarmreport.com

U.S. small business owners grew more optimistic in June but inflation worries are climbing

The NFIB's optimism index rose to 97.4 in June, nearing its 52-year average, as 21% of owners named inflation their top business problem

Jul 14 • 9:08 AM EDT • Business • qz.com

Average MLB fastball velocity is up for the 6th straight year to 94.7 mph

Four-seam fastballs averaged 94.7 mph through Saturday, up from 94.5 mph last year, 93.7 mph in 2021 and 91.9 mph when Major League Baseball first started tracking in 2008.

Jul 14 • 7:53 AM EDT • Sports • spectrumlocalnews.com

US small-business sentiment rebounds in June, inflation a major worry for many

WASHINGTON, July 14 (Reuters) - U.S. small-business sentiment increased in June, but the share of owners reporting that inflation was their "single most important" problem was the highest in nearly two years, and more said they had raised average selli...

Jul 14 • 6:08 AM EDT • Business • kfgo.com

US small-business sentiment rebounds in June, inflation a major worry for many

U.S. small-business sentiment increased in June, but the share of owners reporting that inflation ​was their "single most important" problem was the highest in nearly two years, and more said they had raised ‌average selling prices.

Jul 14 • 6:06 AM EDT • Business • reuters.com

The Quintessential Trump-era Politician

In 2020, I wrote an article about collaboration and collaborators. The title was History Will Judge the Complicit, and it started with the story of two famous East Germans, Markus Wolf and Wolfgang Leonhard, who both landed in East Berlin just after the end of the war. Although they came from very similar backgrounds, the former stuck with the regime, eventually becoming its spy boss; the latter, horrified by the brutal reality of Soviet-style communism, escaped. By way of juxtaposition, I also wrote about Lyndsey Graham and Mitt Romney. These two men also made very different decisions when confronted by Donald Trump’s assault on the ideals that they had both grown up believing: A glance at their biographies would not have led many to predict what happened next. On paper, Graham would have seemed, in 2016, like the man with deeper ties to the military, to the rule of law, and to an old-fashioned idea of American patriotism and American responsibility in the world. Romney, by contrast, with his shifts between the center and the right, with his multiple careers in business and politics, would have seemed less deeply attached to those same old-fashioned patriotic ideals. Most of us register soldiers as loyal patriots, and management consultants as self-interested. We assume people from small towns in South Carolina are more likely to resist political pressure than people who have lived in many places. Intuitively, we think that loyalty to a particular place implies loyalty to a set of values. But in this case the clichés were wrong. It was Graham who made excuses for Trump’s abuse of power. It was Graham—a JAG Corps lawyer—who downplayed the evidence that the president had attempted to manipulate foreign courts and blackmail a foreign leader into launching a phony investigation into a political rival. It was Graham who abandoned his own stated support for bipartisanship and instead pushed for a hyperpartisan Senate Judiciary Committee investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden’s son. It was Graham who played golf with Trump, who made excuses for him on television, who supported the president even as he slowly destroyed the American alliances—with Europeans, with the Kurds—that Graham had defended all his life. By contrast, it was Romney who, in February, became the only Republican senator to break ranks with his colleagues, voting to impeach the president. “Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office,” he said, is “perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one’s oath of office that I can imagine.” In the wake of Graham’s unexpected death on Saturday, I wrote about him again. He was, in many ways, the quintessential politician of Trump’s Washington, a man who shifted 180 degrees. Graham had been a fervent American patriot, proud reserve officer and military lawyer; he became one of the most important defenders of a president who believes soldiers are “suckers and losers” and shows no respect for law of any kind. As his politics changed, his language grew coarser and his behavior grew worse: He urged Israel to “level the place” in Gaza, and insulted the Danish prime minister in Munich, prompting a colleague, Senator Elissa Slotkin, to issue an apology. Here’s an excerpt from the article, which you can read in The Atlantic (gift link here) Like his close friend John McCain, Graham believed that America should stand at the center of a broad democratic alliance. The few times I met him were in that context, at the Munich Security Conference or at other European-American gatherings, which he once attended with great regularity. He also took seriously the practice of American democracy at home. In a 2014 conversation with The Atlantic, he described himself as a pragmatic politician who eschewed populist slogans. “I know Washington is broken, but what’s broken about it is everybody yelling and nobody trying to fix it,” he said. “I’m trying.” When Donald Trump first appeared in U.S. politics, Graham recognized him immediately for what he was: the spokesman for an alien ideology, one radically different from the idealistic patriotism that Graham had practiced and preached since childhood. Trump privately mocked the military that Graham loved as nothing but “suckers and losers.” He put falsehoods, cynicism, and personal greed at the center of his politics, while expressing disdain for transparency, accountability, and democracy itself. In 2015, Graham described Trump as a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” who should “go to hell.” Also as a “nutjob.” When Trump won, Graham understood, as did so many others, that he would have to make some important choices. For a while, he went silent. In the spring of 2016, I saw him at one of those conferences in Europe. He seemed too depressed to speak. But then, like many other Republicans—and, more important, like many other people who have lived under political occupation or experienced radical regime change—he made the decision to abandon his previous ideals, to bury the patriotism that was once so important to him, and to become, instead, a loud, opportunistic collaborator. As I wrote in 2020, it’s very hard to look in to anyone’s heart and to understand their motivations from the outside. But it does seem that Graham had a deep need to be relevant, to be in the game, to be a player, at any cost. And that, rather than any particular achievement, is what he will be remembered for. Continuing to monitor conflicts of interest, ostentatious emoluments, outright corruption and policy changes that will facilitate outright corruption. (Read my original article, Kleptocracy Inc and check out the SNF Agora Institute chart) June 27 Trump diverted funds from more than 900 projects nationwide—including safety upgrades at national parks—to finance beautification projects around Washington, including $700,000 used to fix a White House walkway. June 28 After a years-long Department of Justice investigation into Abbott Laboratories over its management of a baby formula facility where potentially deadly bacteria turned up enough evidence to criminally charge the firm, top department officials instead opted for a financial penalty—illustrating the department’s move away from strict corporate enforcement under the Trump administration. June 29 Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stacked the Defense Policy Board—which is charged with providing independent national security recommendations to the Office of the Secretary of Defense—with Trump allies, including tech billionaire Marc Andreessen, who has invested in defense contractors like OpenAI and SpaceX, after purging the panel last year. Trump purchased between $1 million and $5 million worth of stock in Axon—which makes about 90% of US tasers—two weeks before ICE solicited bids for a $220 million taser contract. The White House unveiled limited-edition US passports for America’s 250th birthday, featuring a portrait of Trump overlaid on the Declaration of Independence. June 30 Trump made around $1.2 billion from his various crypto companies last year, including more than $500 million from World Liberty Financial and $600 million from sales of his meme coin. Trump is considering issuing 250 pardons to commemorate America’s 250th birthday. These are expected to be largely doled out through the Office of the Pardon Attorney’s informal network of intermediaries. White-collar defense attorneys say they can typically win pardons for clients for $2 million. Last year, Trump administration officials awarded a no-bid contract worth up to $500 million to Clark Construction for the White House ballroom—negotiations in which the president was directly involved. July 1 The Amazon MGM Studios documentary about Melania Trump earned the First Lady more than $10 million. Trump made hundreds of individual stock purchases worth as much as $12.8 million the day before his announcement pausing “Liberation Day” tariffs for 90 days sent the S&P 500 soaring nearly 10%—one of the largest single-day gains ever. Mar-a-Lago and Trump National Doral saw record surges in revenue during Trump’s first year in office, earning $77.5 million and $121.9 million respectively, compared to average annual revenues of $25 million and $75 million during Trump’s first term. Entities across the Persian Gulf paid more than $300 million to Trump’s businesses last year, including $263 million from the sale of half his stake in World Liberty Financial to a firm backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a top UAE royal and brother of the country’s president. Kash Patel failed to properly disclose his stock purchase of a Department of Justice contractor, MicroStrategy, worth up to $250,000 last year, despite laws requiring disclosure within 45 days of the trade. July 2 Trump has been directing administration officials to steer more government contracts—so far worth more than $2.4 billion—to Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin aerospace firm, after Amazon gave $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, donated to the White House ballroom project, and reached a $40 million deal to license a Melania Trump documentary. Alongside the billions he made from cryptocurrency last year, Trump earned millions of dollars from real estate licensing fees, including $21 million from organizations in the UAE and $9.2 million in Saudi Arabia, along with smaller sums from merchandise sales, including $4.7 million from Trump Watches and $35,920 from 45 Guitar, a guitar brand endorsed by the president. House Democrats accused consultants tied to the Trump administration of financial fraud, alleging they gave prospective donors to America250—the bipartisan committee created by Congress to celebrate the nation’s semiquincentennial—the banking and routing numbers for Freedom 250, the White House’s fund for events like the UFC cage fight. Democrats also allege that Freedom 250’s CEO traveled to the World Economic Forum in Davos to solicit donations from foreign government officials and business leaders. The Trump administration’s proposed rollback of gun regulations would lift the prohibition on mailing handguns to individuals, a significant win for GrabAGun—the direct-to-consumer firearm retailer on whose board Donald Trump Jr. sits and in which he holds a 1.1% ownership stake. GrabAGun currently must rely on a middleman to transfer firearms to customers. Trump’s financial disclosure revealed that he made more than 21,000 securities trades during his first year back in office, growing his investment account to at least $858 million across stakes in around 1,600 companies, compared to the 13 total trades Joe Biden made during his entire presidency. July 4 Nearly 1 million people who bought the president’s meme coin—Trump Coin—collectively lost $3.8 billion on the token, while he walked away with $636 million. July 6 Shares of Dell closed up 4.4% after Trump recommended people buy the firm’s computers during a speech announcing the launch of Trump investment accounts for children, boosting the more than $1 million worth of shares the president owns in the company. July 9 Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh named crypto investor and Trump ally Marc Andreessen to a task force aimed at modernizing the Federal Reserve, including rethinking its approach to inflation—a key factor keeping interest rates elevated. Palm Beach International Airport has officially changed its name to Trump International Airport—a move that will require Florida to pay royalties to the president’s family for licensing his name. I was there a few months ago, during a trip to Barcelona. The sculptures were a revelation, I’d never seen so many together before. Each one has its own personality. Enjoy the good weather, if you are lucky enough to have it. History Will Judge the Complicit The Quintessential Politician Autocracy Inc Open Letters, from Anne Applebaum is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe

Jul 13 • 4:19 PM EDT • Politics • anneapplebaum.substack.com

New York Yankees Proposed Trade for Giants’ Luis Arraez Revealed

San Francisco Giants infielder, Luis Arraez, who is on an expiring contract, is starting to become one of the most popular trade targets on the MLB trade market, and the New York Yankees stand out as a top fit, given their need for a contact hitter who can hit for average, play good defense, and […] The post New York Yankees Proposed Trade for Giants’ Luis Arraez Revealed appeared first on HEAVY.

Jul 13 • 12:12 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

NEW DATA: Florida Small Business Owners Display Higher Optimism than National Average

State-specific data shows heightened optimism and positive business conditions in Florida.

Jul 13 • 11:47 AM EDT • Business • nfib.com

Connecticut faces Portland on 3-game home skid

Portland averages 9.6 made 3-pointers per game this season, 1.0 more made shot on average than the 8.6 per game Connecticut allows. The teams play for the third time this season. In the last matchup on May 28 the Fire won 71-61 led by 20 points from Carla Leite, while Morrow scored 13 points for the Sun. TOP PERFORMERS: Olivia Nelson-Ododa is averaging nine points and 5.6 rebounds for the Sun. Leila Lacan is averaging 14.0 points over the last 10 games.

Jul 13 • 2:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

When regulation is good for business

By now, I think I have established both my view that I am a fan of ESG investing and the benefits of regulating what is and isn’t a sustainable investment, and my view that in Europe, ESG regulation has gone too far and become too costly. It almost feels like the old Aristotelian maxim of doing things in moderation that leads to the best outcomes is valid in regulatory efforts as well. To give you an example, let’s look at a study by the National Bank of Belgium on the impact of the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) on fund flows of conventional and ESG funds. The SFDR was announced on 27 November 2019 and came into effect on 10 March 2021. It was implemented in several stages and split funds marketed in the EU into three broad categories: (i) Art. 6 funds that are basically conventional funds without any specific ESG integration, (ii) Art. 8 funds that ‘promote environmental or social characteristics’, which must provide additional reporting how they do that, and (iii) Art. 9 funds that are impact funds. The gaps between the announcement and the phased implementation give us an idea of how fund flows were affected by the regulation. It is clearly visible in the figure below that once the new regulation was announced and when it was initially implemented, fund flows in Art. 8 and Art. 9 funds increased significantly. Conventional Art. 6 funds also saw more inflows, but the increase was not statistically significant. I should add that the data below is pure fund flow, cleaned of performance effects and of any reclassified funds that moved from one classification to another. Note also that once the initial rush in ESG funds was over, additional, stricter regulatory requirements didn’t create that many new flows. This implies that with additional regulation, the funds incurred higher costs to comply but didn’t benefit in terms of new inflows and higher assets under management. Fund flows as the SFDR regulation was implemented in the EU Source: Emiris et al. (2026) When examining the drivers of these flows, the authors of the study found that institutional investors were more likely to switch to ESG funds and particularly so in countries where concerns about sustainability are culturally more accepted. In a society where buy-in into environmental and social risks is higher, private investors were shifting more of their assets into ESG funds as the regulation made it clear which funds are really green and which ones are not. And institutional investors in these countries did so as well, given the societal pressures and reputational risks of sticking with conventional funds. Meanwhile, fund managers reacted to the changing regulatory environment as well. Many funds that were mildly green before the regulation was announced became greener and more sustainable as the regulation was introduced to attract new assets and new investors. Cleverly, and unsurprisingly, these ESG funds also charge on average higher fees, which means that not only did fund managers gather fresh assets, but their profitability increased as well.

Jul 13 • 2:00 AM EDT • Business • klementoninvesting.substack.com

Reds Draft Seminoles P Brodie Purcell in the 12th Round

Cincinnati continues its Florida State pipeline, snagging the hard-throwing reliever after a dominant season featuring 58 strikeouts and a stingy .207 opponent batting average for the Seminoles.

Jul 12 • 10:45 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Milwaukee Bucks Make Tyler Herro Announcement After Trade

Tyler Herro was traded (via the Miami Heat) to the Milwaukee Bucks earlier this month.The former Kentucky star had spent all seven seasons of his career with the Heat.He is coming off a year where he had averages of 20.5 points, 4.8 rebounds and 4.1 assists per contest while shooting 48.0% from the field and […] The post Milwaukee Bucks Make Tyler Herro Announcement After Trade appeared first on HEAVY.

Jul 12 • 6:49 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Broncos' 2026 offense considered average under poor reasoning

The Denver Broncos have a chance to be much better on offense in 2026 for exactly the opposite reason that one analyst feels they won't be.

Jul 12 • 5:44 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Reform would have held just 15% of last year’s donations under proposed £100,00 cap, analysis shows

Exclusive: Party’s average registered donation was £137, 496, almost six times that of Labour or Conservatives

Jul 12 • 1:01 PM EDT • Politics • theguardian.com

Tencent Music Entertainment Group Sponsored ADR (NYSE:TME) Given Average Rating of "Hold" by Brokerages

Tencent Music Entertainment Group Sponsored ADR (NYSE:TME - Get Free Report) has earned an average recommendation of "Hold" from the fourteen ratings firms that are presently covering the firm, Marketbeat reports. Eight equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and six have

Jul 12 • 12:29 PM EDT • Entertainment • marketbeat.com

Scientists stunned as glacier ‘piracy’ unfolds at a pace never seen before - Futura-Sciences

The scene of the heist: West Antarctica In West Antarctica, plenty of glaciers have responded to climate change in the way you might expect: they’re hurrying their flow into the ocean. On average, since 2005, these glaciers have sped up by around 51%. But not every glacier is following the...

Jul 11 • 9:00 AM EDT • Science • futura-sciences.com

Health insurers propose double-digit-percentage price increases for Illinois exchange plans

For 2027, the state’s largest health insurer, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois, is proposing an average price increase of 14.9% across its exchange plans.

Jul 9 • 2:18 PM EDT • Health • chicagotribune.com

A career worth the call: After 52 years in four sports, umpire Rene Arsenault hangs up his gear

When Rene Arsenault began his career behind the dish as an umpire, things certainly looked different across the landscape in the country. It was 1974 in Fitchburg. He was a plucky high school graduate. The average home cost about $21,000. Gas prices hovered around 30 cents a gallon and a loaf of bread listed for […]

Jul 9 • 2:00 PM EDT • Sports • recorder.com

First Freedom Fuel gas station opens as Trump-backed discounts roll out

The White House says the first Freedom Fuel gas station has opened in Philadelphia, offering gasoline for about 50 cents below the statewide average as part of a broader rollout.

Jul 8 • 9:27 PM EDT • Business • foxbusiness.com

Oregon data centers face sharp electricity rate hike under new law

Oregon's PUC approved a 29% rate hike on data centers under the POWER Act, while residential customers will see bills drop by an average of 1.3%.

Jul 8 • 2:37 PM EDT • Business • foxbusiness.com

Detroit Pistons trade Marcus Sasser to Dusty May's Dallas Mavericks

Marcus Sasser, who had several big moments in 3 years with the Detroit Pistons, averaged 5.2 points and shot 41.5% from 3 last season in 38 games.

Jul 7 • 11:52 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

WA's small business outlook trails national average, report finds

Washington's small business climate is underperforming the rest of the country, according to a report.

Jul 7 • 7:01 PM EDT • Business • mynorthwest.com

Men’s average testosterone levels have halved in last 50 years, say scientists

Exclusive: Researchers warn of ‘major crisis in male reproductive health’ partly driven by obesity and diabetes

Jul 7 • 11:41 AM EDT • Science • theguardian.com

Delaware Small Business Job Openings Rebound in June

Small Business Employment Index is near its historical average.

Jul 6 • 11:00 AM EDT • Business • nfib.com

The Sports Audio Report: Demographics at Play

Younger Sports Fans Are More Likely to Engage with Sports Audio Download the Report >> Millennial and Gen Z sports fans spend more time with sports audio weekly than Gen X and Boomers, according to the Sports Audio Report: Demographics at Play from Edison Research and SiriusXM Media. Millennial sports fans spent an average of 6 hours and 16 minutes with...

Jul 6 • 9:08 AM EDT • Sports • ssrs.com

Lopez homers, Alcantara leads Marlins past Athletics

Otto Lopez padded his MLB-leading average with three hits while Sandy Alcantara fanned eight over eight dominant innings, lifting Miami to their eighth victory in eleven games.

Jul 5 • 1:38 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Global wealth jumps but disparity widens, UBS report shows

Since 2020, average wealth per US adult has grown 10%, while median wealth has fallen 20%.

Jul 3 • 5:26 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com

Timeline Emerges For LeBron James' Free Agency Decision

Even at the age of 41, LeBron James still has basketball fans around the world anxious to find out where he's heading next. Despite taking a step back at times during the 2025-26 season, James flexed his muscles during the postseason. He powered the Los Angeles Lakers to the second round, averaging ...

Jul 2 • 4:58 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

NFIB Jobs Report: Small Business Job Openings Rebound

Small Business Employment Index is near its historical average

Jul 2 • 4:55 PM EDT • Business • nfib.com

iPhone Fold could help raise average foldable phone prices by 18%

Apple’s entry into the foldable smartphone market will reportedly be one of the factors driving an 18% increase in average sale prices in the category in 2026.

Jul 2 • 4:54 PM EDT • Technology • 9to5mac.com

Ohio Small Business Job Openings Rebound in June

Small Business Employment Index is near its historical average.

Jul 2 • 3:48 PM EDT • Business • nfib.com

Small Business Job Openings Rebound

Texas Border Business AUSTIN, Texas – NFIB’s June Jobs Report shows that the Small Business Employment Index remained essentially flat, registering 100.2 in June after measuring 100.3 in May. This is the fourth consecutive month the Index declined. The current reading is below the 2025 average of 101.2 but still slightly above the historical average of 100.0. In June, […]

Jul 2 • 3:40 PM EDT • Business • texasborderbusiness.com

Anfernee Simons agrees to 2-year deal with Philadelphia 76ers

The Philadelphia 76ers agreed to a two-year, $12.3 million contract with guard Anfernee Simons. Simons averaged 14.3 points per game last season.

Jul 2 • 3:19 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Cavs sign rookie Meleek Thomas to a four-year deal

The Cleveland Cavaliers have signed Meleek Thomas to a four-year, $9.3 million deal. Thomas was selected 34th overall by the Cavs last week in the 2026 NBA Draft. Thomas played 37 games with Arkansas last year as a freshman. He averaged 15.7 points and 3.8 rebounds as a 6’3” sharpshooting combo-guard. The Cavs are excited […]

Jul 1 • 4:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Global ocean temperatures are entering “uncharted territory,” climate scientists say

Sea surface temperatures in late June reached nearly 70 degrees Fahrenheit on average, shattering records

Jul 1 • 3:44 PM EDT • Science • scientificamerican.com

Norman Powell agrees to 2-year, $45 million deal with Bulls: report

Powell averaged 21.7 points per game for the Miami Heat this past season.

Jul 1 • 9:33 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

GoDaddy names San Antonio America's most entrepreneurial city

San Antonio tops GoDaddy’s 2026 list of America’s most entrepreneurial cities, with 11% small business growth and 9,232 new businesses. A new Zillow tie-in cites below-average home values and rent as key draws.

Jun 30 • 1:30 PM EDT • Business • news4sanantonio.com

Warriors backup point guard declines 2026-27 player option

De'Anthony Melton has declined his player option for next season after averaging a career high in points last year.

Jun 30 • 3:30 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

2 New Order Members Step Away From Touring Due to Health Reasons

New Order announced Monday that Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert will not be joining their show at Primavera in Chile in November.

Jun 29 • 7:20 PM EDT • Health • variety.com

T-Mobile retires legacy plans, prompting price hikes and customer backlash

Average plan increase is $4 per month

Jun 29 • 11:00 AM EDT • Technology • androidpolice.com

Safety in the summer

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, July is, on average, the hottest month of the year in the United States.

Jun 29 • 2:00 AM EDT • Health • safetyandhealthmagazine.com

Jimmie Williams could be Ohio State’s most important transfer addition

After averaging more than 15 points per game at Duquesne, Jimmie Williams brings physical scoring, positional versatility, and the dependable bench offense Ohio State has lacked in recent seasons.

Jun 28 • 9:31 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Houston Rockets Star Alperen Sengun Catches Stray From NBA Rookie

One of the NBA’s best young stars today is Houston Rockets center Alperen Sengun.The 23-year-old big man is already a two-time All-Star, averaging 20.4 points, 8.9 rebounds, 6.2 assists, 1.2 steals and 1.1 blocks last season. He helped the Rockets make the playoffs as the fifth seed.However, the Rockets suffered a disappointing exit at the […] The post Houston Rockets Star Alperen Sengun Catches Stray From NBA Rookie appeared first on HEAVY.

Jun 28 • 8:33 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Maryland health insurance rates could rise 13.7% in 2027 under proposal

BALTIMORE — Maryland residents who buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace could see higher premiums next year, with insurers requesting an average rate increase of 13.7% for

Jun 28 • 5:00 AM EDT • Health • hanfordsentinel.com

New York Knicks Champion Mitchell Robinson Makes Heartfelt Post

Mitchell Robinson is coming off his eighth season in the NBA.The 28-year-old has become an extremely valuable player for the New York Knicks in that span.He is coming off a season where he averaged 5.7 points, 8.8 rebounds and 1.2 blocks per contest while shooting 72.3% from the field in 60 games.Knicks Champion Robinson Makes […] The post New York Knicks Champion Mitchell Robinson Makes Heartfelt Post appeared first on HEAVY.

Jun 27 • 3:48 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com