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Today's Topics
Happy Thanksgiving weekend to all our American readers
- Moneyball. What are the world's most valuable sports teams?
- Thanksgiving. How many Americans are travelling at this time of year?
- LVMH. How the luxury giant just can't stop doing deals.
The numbers behind the numbers: 3 charts, 802 words, 4 mins 40 seconds to read.
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Earlier this week American private equity firm Silver Lake bought a 10% stake in Manchester City football club - valuing them at just shy of $5bn. Curious about where that placed them in the global world of sport, we dug into the latest sports team valuation estimates from Forbes.
The Top 10
The latest deal for Man City puts them at #2 globally, just behind the Dallas Cowboys, but they're not the only football (soccer) team in the top 10. In fact, 4 of the top 10 are comprised of arguably the 2 biggest rivalries in the world of sport: El Clasico (Real vs. Barca) and the Manchester Derby (Man U vs. Man City).
The rest of the top 10 is made up of 3 NBA franchises, 2 NFL teams and - punching way above the rest of their baseball compatriots - the New York Yankees.
The Top 50
If the top 10 was pretty evenly split, the broader list is a lot less even. NFL teams make up more than half of the list, with 26 out of the 32 teams making it into the most valuable 50.
Baseball struggles to field many entrants - just 7 - and if the latest viewership declines are anything to go by, that number is probably only going to get smaller. Perhaps in a few years we can update this chart... maybe an e-sports team will make the cut?
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This stat just blows our mind. The number of Americans heading home for Thanksgiving, that will travel more than 50 miles, is estimated to be about 55 million people, and of those, 49 million are expected to be driving there (AAA).
That's a lot of people - but to put it fully in context we find it a lot easier to think of cities. Those 49 million odd people driving to Thanksgiving is equivalent to the entire populations of New York, Paris, London, Barcelona, Rome, Sydney and Toronto getting in their cars and leaving their city.
We hope the traffic wasn't too bad if you were one of those people.
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LVMH is a company that's got quite accustomed to swallowing its rivals. Under the leadership of Bernard Arnault, LVMH has gone on a luxury buying spree unlike any other - and just this week they added the latest brand to their portfolio - Tiffany & Co.
LVMH has agreed to buy Tiffany & Co. for $16bn in a bid to turn around the fortunes of the struggling jewelry business with its patented formula of price increases and increased exclusivity.
How can LVMH do this over and over?
These acquisitions haven't just been needless luxuries - with each deal Mr. Arnault makes a plan to expand the reach and influence of each brand. By using lots of debt (loans) to finance the deals, he doesn't give up too much control, and paying back those debts are easy when you have a portfolio of 75 other brands that are profitable. Once acquired Mr. Arnault focuses on ensuring just one thing; that "desirability for the brand is higher in 10 years than it is now" (Bernard Arnault, 2019).
Europe's Crown Jewels
Europe doesn't have a powerful technology sector like the US, nor is it an industrial or manufacturing powerhouse as China is, but one thing Europe seems to be very good at is Luxury goods.
The romance of European culture, or its long and rich history, seems to keep people coming back for more Swiss watches, French wine and Italian leather goods - and LVMH is happy to sell you any of them - you just won't know it's them.
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Data Snacks
1) Surgeons in India recently removed a kidney stone that weighed 7.4kg from a patient - that's about as heavy as the heaviest legal bowling ball.
2) Black Friday is upon us. Last year saw over $6bn worth of e-commerce sales in the US alone. Sounds like a lot, but it's still nothing compared to China's Singles' Day, which does over $30bn of sales.
3) Man City may now be the world's most valuable football club, but the data scientists at fivethirtyeight predict they've only got a 28% chance of winning the Premier League this year. According to their model, they see Liverpool winning the title 68% of the time from here.
4) A grandma accidentally texted the wrong number when trying to invite her grandson to Thanksgiving dinner back in 2016. 17 year-old Jamal Hinton was the wrong number, but he ended up coming over anyway, and this year marks their 4th of spending the holiday together.
5) Bushfires in Australia have been estimated to have killed 1000 koalas, along with 80% of their habitat.
6) Taylor Swift was named artist of the decade at the AMAs. Her 11-minute performance has already racked up almost 7 million views on YouTube in 2 days.
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