WWE Sells Ring Mat Sponsorship for First Time in Pact With Logan Paul’s Prime Sports Drink

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Vince McMahon, the founder and former CEO of wrestling entertainment company WWE, received about $100 million through a sale of about 3.5 million shares of TKO Group. TKO Group was formed last year through the Endeavor-led merger of UFC and WWE. Endeavor maintains a majority interest in TKO.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of the failed FTX cryptocurrency exchange, was sentenced to 25 years in prison by a federal judge Thursday. A federal jury in November 2023 convicted Bankman-Friend on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy related to the collapse of his cryptocurrency company and related hedge fund. The charges had carried a maximum prison term of 110 years.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Stassi Schroeder Clark’s weekly lifestyle podcast, “Straight Up With Stassi,” has joined Dear Media’s roster of 80-plus shows — and it’s getting a new name. Beginning today, the podcast will be renamed “Stassi.” With distribution deal for Schroeder Clark’s podcast, Dear Media has announced a “refreshed content format” along with new visual branding across all podcast distribution platforms.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor UPDATED: Nelson Peltz claims Disney‘s board, not CEO Bob Iger, is the problem. But his investment firm, Trian Group, withheld its votes for Iger’s reelection to the Disney board. With just over a week before Disney’s annual shareholder meeting on April 3, Peltz’s Trian — which has been aggressively campaigning to get two seats on the Mouse House’s board — issued a new statement Monday saying the battle is not about any dispute with Iger but rather about forcing change on the board’s composition to boost the company’s financial returns.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Actor and entrepreneur Blake Lively said she’s “mortified” about her joke about Kate Middleton‘s “Photoshop fails” — with the apology coming after the Princess of Wales confirmed Friday that she has undergone treatment for cancer. “I’m sure no one cares today but I feel like I have to acknowledge this,” Lively said in a message shared Friday on her Instagram account.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Michael Eisner, the former Disney CEO who exited the company in 2005, is the latest member of the extended Disneyverse to weigh in with support for current chief exec Bob Iger, who’s facing a proxy fight with activist investors including Nelson Peltz in a vote for board candidates at Disney’s April 3 annual shareholders meeting. “[I]n 1983, Disney was under attack by corporate raiders trying to take over the company,” Eisner wrote in a post on X, referring to the unsuccessful attempt by financier Saul Steinberg to stage a hostile takeover of the company.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Streaming video services continue to face challenges like high costs, high churn rates and competition from other media — while a good chunk of U.S. audiences still questions whether the price of their subscriptions is worth it. On average, Americans households that subscribe to streaming video entertainment services said they spend $61 per month for four services, according to Deloitte’s 18th annual Digital Media Trends report.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor China hawks in the House have propped TikTok on a political football tee, passing legislation that threatens to kick it off the phones of millions of Americans unless TikTok’s Chinese parent, ByteDance, sells its ownership in the app. Right now, there appears to be much less urgency in the Senate to move forward on a measure aimed at forcing TikTok to cut its China ties, while President Biden has said he would sign such a bill (even as his re-election campaign just launched an account on TikTok). Meanwhile, to China, the saber-rattling looks like a trade dispute — wherein the U.S., on the pretext of “national security” concerns, is looking to thwart a successful overseas internet app that has been grabbing share of viewing time and ad dollars from American tech companies.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor MrBeast, the YouTuber known for big-money giveaways, is going bigger than ever with his new show on Amazon’s Prime Video. The mega-popular YouTube creator, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, announced a deal with Prime Video for “Beast Games,” a reality-competition show promising the winner a $5 million cash prize — believed to be the largest single payout ever in TV history.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney+ is officially in its Taylor Swift era. With the launch of “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (Taylor’s Version)” on Disney+ on March 14 at 6 p.m. PT, the megastar is getting a homepage takeover on the streamer.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor In what’s poised to be one of the biggest initial public offerings of the year, Reddit disclosed financial details of its forthcoming IPO, through which it’s aiming to raise as much as $748 million. On Monday, in an update to its S-1 filing with the SEC, Reddit said it will offer 22 million shares, expected to be listed at an IPO price of between $31 and $34 per share.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor UPDATE, 3/8, 1:15 p.m. ET: In an about-face, Apple restored Epic Games‘ developer account for Sweden, two days after terminating it over what the tech giant said was Epic’s “egregious breach of its contractual obligations to Apple.” Epic said Apple’s reversal will allow it proceed with plans to launch battle-royale game “Fortnite” and the Epic Games Store in European countries.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Marilyn Monroe, who died 62 years ago, has been reincarnated as a “hyper-real” AI-generated digital avatar that lets fans engage in a conversation with the late actor — who can answer questions “in Marilyn’s signature voice and style,” according the company behind the project. AI technology firm Soul Machines unveiled Digital Marilyn, an interactive experience in which she “shares anecdotes and even delivers personalized greetings, creating an unforgettable experience for Marilyn fans.” The AI-generated chatbot lets you interact with the late actor “in real-time using advanced natural language processing, deep learning and GPT 3.5,” Soul Machines said in announcing the project Friday.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor TikTok, the massively popular video app owned by Chinese internet giant ByteDance, apparently has an ally in Donald Trump. The former U.S. president expressed opposition to a national ban of TikTok not for, say, First Amendment reasons but because such a move would likely boost the fortunes of Meta’s Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor With American lawmakers sounding the alarm again over TikTok‘s ties to China’s communist regime, the U.S. House Energy and Commerce committee unanimously voted to approve a bill that would give China’s ByteDance 165 days to divest its ownership of TikTok — or effectively face a U.S. ban.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor ESPN+ is now available to Charter’s Spectrum TV Select Plus customers nationwide at no additional cost — coming after the cable operator added Disney+ for free earlier this year. The addition of ESPN+, which regularly costs $10.99 per month, comes under Disney and Charter’s distribution agreement reached in September 2023 — following a 12-day blackout of ESPN and other Disney networks on Charter.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Vince McMahon, the founder of WWE who resigned from the board of TKO Group earlier this year amid sexual assault allegations against him, filed to sell $411.95 million worth of TKO stock, according to a regulatory filing. McMahon’s sale comprised 5.35 million shares of TKO, per an SEC filing Monday. That came after he sold 8.4 million shares of Class A common stock in TKO — in sale worth $670.3 million — last November.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney CEO Bob Iger acknowledged that the company is behind Netflix in terms of technical capabilities — and that the Mouse House is in the process of catching up. “We need to be at their level” of technical capability, in order to reduce marketing expenses and cut churn rates, Iger said about Netflix, speaking Tuesday at the 2024 Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference. Iger reiterated that Disney is on track to achieve profitability in the streaming business — which includes Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ — by the fiscal quarter that ends September 2024.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Will Shortz, the longtime crossword puzzle editor of the New York Times and NPR’s “puzzlemaster” for more than three decades, suffered a stroke last month and has spent the last several weeks rehabilitating. Shortz revealed the injury in a recorded message aired on on NPR’s “Weekend Edition Sunday” on March 5. He has been absent from the show in recent weeks, and at the end today’s puzzle segment, “Weekend Edition Sunday” host Ayesha Rascoe shared an audio clip from Shortz to let fans know the situation.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Fubo chief David Gandler took the gloves off in lambasting the joint venture formed by Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox Corp.