Ben Everard

Nov 20th. Save the date.

Live sports for the win.

@darrenrovell Jump ball goes to the high bid. Or the aligned bid?

This is a first. A team announcing that their jersey patch is available.

@NicoleBehnam Taste will define the next stage of this evolution.

You think AI is replacing creativity when really it’s making mediocre output free and abundant, which means taste is now the only scarce resource.

@INTLBaseball24 The more global the game...

The fact that Manfred is even speaking of this as a realistic possibility let’s you know the owners are open to the idea because the tournament was a massive success. Ratings for non-US games blew away previous records.

How big a role have the Savannah Bananas played in turning the World Baseball Classic into a powerhouse for baseball? I'd argue more than one might think at first glance. The casual fan has entered the baseball chat, broadly speaking, in part due to banana ball.

The Royal Rumble for relief pitchers. So long as the offense has the chance to match with a new pinch hitter after seeing the reliever emerge, I would be on board with this.

This is why us humans will always be attracted to live sports. There is an innate emotional connection to what happens on the court (or field). The imperfection of a human playing at the highest level ADDS to the drama of the moment. We rise. We fall. We remain. We persevere. Live sports FTW.

@mikeastahl Can go in so many directions with it.

@beneverard Perfect

Today's edition of the log line for a soon to be written feature film.

This reboot works big time IMO.

Live sports FTW.

@Ben13Porter A worthy idea.

Replace the MLB All-Star Game with a 4 Nations tournament like the NHL did: - North America - Caribbean - South America - Asia Keep the HR Derby and skip it on Olympic years. Keep the WBC exactly as it is.

@mikeastahl One of Hollywood's most important mantras: KEEP GOING.

In March of 1999: The Matrix opened in theaters. Two first-time big-budget directors. A script that every major studio had passed on. A lead who almost was not cast. (Will Smith passed) The Wachowskis convinced Warner Bros with a 600-page shot-by-shot storyboard. The screenplay went through many iterations and was pared down because of the amount of the material. The film went on to gross $463 million worldwide and win four Academy Awards.

NIL in a whole new light.

Today's edition of the log line for a soon to be written feature film.

@Travis_Sawchik How many MLB franchises have elected to take their 10% (or more) private equity portion off the table? With the rising valuations, they can quite easily liquidate a portion of the team to a passive minority PE stake.

Revenues are climbing for most clubs but revenue imbalance is also growing - and to record levels

@SBJ @MazzNYC Does MLB own the Classic?

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred praised the explosive growth of the World Baseball Classic, highlighting record attendance, rising global viewership and major media deals as proof of the event’s expanding impact. MORE via @mazznyc: ow.ly/2vAe50YvUhN

@RamboVanHalen Well stated: “Film is a funny thing. On one hand it's art. But on the other it's a mass consumer product--like a car, or a soft drink.” The show must go on.

I put in 25 years. It would be 26 but I haven't worked yet this year and I'm not sure I'll ever work in entertainment again. The writing has been on the wall for quite some time. But it's a sad thing--especially since the collapse of Hollywood is (mostly) self inflicted. Outsiders like to blame the unions and burdensome regulations. That's not exactly wrong, but the big reason is that Hollywood stopped making a product that people wanted to consume. Film is a funny thing. On one hand it's art. But on the other it's a mass consumer product--like a car, or a soft drink. But unlike a typical consumer product, it was something we consumed together. We went to a special place, and sat with strangers, and watched stories. And those stories infected us. They entered our minds and our souls and they implanted things. Deep things. Ancient things. Timeless things. Things like heroism and beauty and love and fear and sex and death and adventure and tragedy and pain and injustice and all the things that make up our dreams. There's a thing we call "cinematic language". It's how we tell a story with images. (And BTW if you want to learn more about the language of visual media, read Scott McCloud's excellent book Understanding Comics.) An odd thing about cinematic language is that it's the same language as dreams. There's a scene in Christopher Nolan's Inception where Leonardo DiCaprio is explains to (the tragic) Ellen Page how dreams work. But what he's really describing is cinematic language. Inception is really a movie about movies BTW. While it's far from my favorite film, I think it's the perfect film. Because the suspension of disbelief is perfect. You believe the plot about dreams because you're familiar with how movies work--maybe not consciously--but you know. Everyone knows. Maybe not everyone has seen a movie, but everyone has dreams. Another odd thing about film: you don't "watch" a movie, you look into it. And you put yourself inside it. Now you're in the dream. And you're hypnotized. Because movies do that too. The motion--the moving images--they hack your brain. We're programed to pay attention to moving things. Even when the things aren't real. Even when they're just light reflected off a screen. So we'd go to these special places--these movie theaters--these temples--and we'd sit, and we'd "watch" and we'd enter the dream. And we did it together. And after the movie was over--and the lights came on, and we'd file out over the sound of popcorn crunching under our feet--we were different. We had become transformed. Sometimes we were changed in minor ways. But sometimes not. Sometimes we were changed in profound ways. And we did it together. Before the movie we were a room full of strangers. But after--on the way out the door--we all had something in common. Because we shared an experience. We'd shared the dream. And we'd all become transformed. And then tech got involved... Streaming turned movies from a communal experience to a personal experience. And that's an issue, but they did something else too. They started developing movies as if they were tech products. But you can't apply a KPI to a dream. At least, not successfully anyway. Because dreams don't work like that--nor does any sort of art. And that's a funny thing about making movies. You try to make the best film you can, but at the end of the day you have no idea if it's good or if it's going to be successful. You just have to hope the audience likes it. Now, you can design a movie that will appeal to a preexisting audience. Marvel movies are like this. There's a large group of fanboy nerds that will see every single one. You can count on them every time. Just like you can count on the Gay Oscar Bait crowd (for example). But those movies are slop. But Hollywood became specialists in slop. Because slop is safe. Because you could apply KPI style metrics to slop. As a result they lost the audience. And the audience is probably never coming back. I wrote a book in 2024 (that was published in 2025). While writing, I thought of it as my farewell to the industry. But looking back, what I was actually writing was a eulogy for Hollywood--the place where dreams were made. And so it goes...

@JoePompliano Excellent wine selections.

The menu for Rory McIlroy’s Masters champions dinner has been released 👏

A caveat to @balajis’s AI-driven world for the future of content. The reality is that TASTE will be the ultimate differentiator. Taste is an inherently human construct. Anyone on the planet has the theoretical potential to create music at the level of Mozart. And yet centuries separate the emergence of such genius output. Humanity has had the ability to generate AI music for several years now. Yet, no AI song has genuinely broken through the cultural zeitgeist. The same will be true with movies. AI will be a tool that allows the greatest storytellers to generate their content more efficiently. But it will still be driven by the humans with taste.