The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 1,621 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 27 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Gilbert: TSMC may be the key force maintaining geopolitical peace
“We should say that it may be the thing keeping geopolitical tensions at rest. Like it may be the force that nobody wants to destabilize and therefore we have peace. Like, it's not just a company.”
Gilbert: Internet barbell dynamics will squeeze the middle in every industry
“I don't think this is unique to media. I think media was the first to experience this sort of squishing in the middle, but it's gonna happen to everything.”
No venture-backed consumer hardware startup has survived standalone in a decade
“In the last 10 plus years, there has not been a breakout consumer hardware piece of technology that is, that survives as a standalone company, and you look back at Fitbit and GoPro and Jambox. I even wanna call out, this one's gonna be a serious callback, but …”
John Foley sold $96M of Peloton stock near its 2021 peak
“John Foley sold ninety six million dollars of Peloton stock in 2021 when the price was really high and he was talking about what a strong future the company still had in front of it.”
Shamrock Capital Will Never Recoup Its $300M Taylor Swift Masters Investment
“I think Shamrock and the Disney family are gonna be left holding the bag on this investment that they'll never recoup”
Gilbert: Acquiring Capital Cities/ABC Cost Disney Its Strategic Clarity
“It was because it had ESPN, but it also cost the company It's strategic clarity. Disney never again would get to be just Disney. It's the flywheel business and the ESPN affiliate slash advertising cable business. And it's worth it because buying ESPN was this …”
Steve Jobs demanded 100% of Pixar film profits in renegotiation with Disney
“He proposes a deal to Eisner, and this is where the relationship becomes irreparable. Pixar should actually be getting a hundred percent of the profits, not 50%, and they're now prepared to fund the budget themselves, too. Disney would just get a 10% distribut…”
Disney secretly formed Circle 7 Animation to make Pixar sequels without Pixar
“Disney actually does start a new studio inside the company called Circle Seven Animation. That will be tasked with developing, right away, Toy Story III, Monsters, Inc. II, and Finding Nemo II.”
Top weekly Disney+ movies are consistently Pixar and Disney Animation
“We've heard that the vast majority of the top 15 movies viewed every week on Disney Plus are either Pixar or Disney Animation. Not live action, not Star Wars, not The Avengers. The stuff that kids watch over and over. And those Disney animation movies are all …”
Gilbert: Disney should have paid far less for Lucasfilm than Marvel
“Turns out they should have paid well less than whatever they were willing to pay for Marvel, too.
Because Star Wars just didn't turn out to have that much more exploitation ahead of it.”
ESPN's cash flow fully funded Disney's Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm acquisitions
“If you go line up those three acquisitions, which sound ludicrous on their price tags, especially when you didn't know how they were gonna pay off, Pixar at 7.4 billion, let's even include the cash in there, that's about two and a half years of cable's then pr…”
Marvel's post-2021 theatrical film slate might actually have a negative return
“And if you do flash forward, the post 2021 movie slate might actually be negative on a theatrical return.”
Gilbert: Disney+ series diluted the Marvel Cinematic Universe's stakes
“This is even ignoring the Disney Plus shows, some of which were very cool, Loki and WandaVision, but the existence of them by trying to be bigger and broader and more expansive even than the movies make the original universe feel unimportant.”
Gilbert: Netflix's operating income matches Disney's total company operating income
“Netflix's operating income on streaming, their entire business is the same as Disney's entire company operating income.”
Parks and cruises now account for almost 60% of Disney's total profits
“Almost 60% of the profits of the entire company come from parks and cruises.”
Gilbert: Disney's historic profit eras were structural anomalies
“Disney's gonna be fine, and if managed very carefully, thrive. They're still gonna produce beloved characters and stories we all love, But the prosperity from the late nineties and the 2005 to 20 19 era, that was a complete anomaly due to how good all the stru…”
Film production is a mediocre business except for Disney
“The business of feature film production is a mediocre one, especially by the standards of what we study on this show here with Acquired, except for Disney.”
Disney invented the flywheel business model concept
“And they really did invent the entire concept of the flywheel business model that so many entrepreneurs are trying to copy.”
Retlaw received $121 million from Disney Productions for attractions and royalties
“Insanely, Wed Enterprises, which would later be Rett Law, got a total of seventy-five million dollars in checks from Walt Disney Productions for the Disneyland Railroad and for the monorail, between 1953 and 1981, and another forty six million for name royalti…”
Dying before building EPCOT metropolis likely protected Walt Disney's legacy
“It just doesn't make sense to me, and it may have protected his legacy that he didn't live another 10 or 20 years to see this through.”
Vanguard and rival index funds own 24% of the US stock market
“Vanguard is the largest shareholder of most U.S. Corporations, and together with the other big index funds like BlackRock, State Street, and Fidelity, they own 24% of the entire U.S. Stock market.”
Vanguard has saved retail investors $1 trillion in Wall Street fees
“Because of Vanguard's relentless cost-cutting and low fees, Vanguard has saved investors over five hundred billion dollars in fees and trading costs since its founding in 1975, and as a recent book The Bogle Effect argues, Vanguard's actions also forced the ha…”
Active investing is mathematically zero-sum before fees are subtracted
“If you take all the winners and all the losers and sum them up, And don't take out any fees. You come up with zero. Every positive winner on the side of a trade has a loser on the other side of the trade. And so in aggregate, all investors together are the mar…”
Vanguard has lacked meaningful scaled innovation for a decade
“There is this interesting question, which is that they haven't really had any new innovations in a while, call it a decade, that Have been really meaningful to the business and that they've continued to scale.”
84% of Vanguard funds have outperformed their peers over the past decade
“84% of Vanguard's funds have outperformed their peers over the last 10 years.”
Running a successful mutual fund is a commodity, not a differentiated product
“Jack had the insight that running a successful mutual fund is actually not a differentiated product. It is a commodity. What you are seeking is the highest possible long-term return on your capital. That is not like buying a unique piece of jewelry. It is like…”
Zero-fee broad market indexing reliably guarantees top-decile 40-year performance
“There's gonna be lots of funds that you can be in that will outperform in fits and starts, but if you wanna be the, in the upper decile, After 40 years, then it turns out owning the market with no fees is an almost surefire way to do it.”
Gilbert: Ferrari is the only ultra-luxury brand with mass cultural awareness
“So I would say Ferrari is the only ultra luxury brand that has reached mass cultural awareness.”
Gilbert: Ferrari Combines Hermès Scarcity with Manchester United Global Fandom
“Ferrari is Hermes and Manchester United smashed together.”
Gilbert: Ferrari Icona and Supercar buyers own 10+ new Ferraris
“Clients who were invited to the supercar or the Icona class These people own at least 10 new Ferraris, maybe 20 plus Ferraris in a garage. These people are tens of millions of dollars deep into buying Ferraris.”
Gilbert: Marrying a luxury brand with a sports team is a cheat code
“If you can marry a luxury brand with a sports team, it is a business cheat code.”
Bernie Ecclestone Stripped Formula 1 Race Tracks of Advertising and Hospitality Revenue
“In addition to these agreements that Bernie was having everyone sign, race organizers were required to surrender income from trackside advertising and corporate hospitality.
To Formula One owned entities.
So this now means that the race organizer, the track bu…”
Formula 1's Role in Inventing Consumer Road Car Technology Is Overstated
“I think people sort of overstate this when they say there's all this technology that That came from F-one cars, but I think it's more like the technology was sort of iterated and perfected, or they would explore new material science or something in F-one cars …”
Red Bull Racing Operates at Near-Zero Profit Just to Market Energy Drinks
“They generate zero profit despite being one of the best teams and the highest revenue teams or near zero profit, very thin to create the biggest marketing spectacle that they can to sell energy drinks.”
The Mercedes Formula 1 Team Generates an Estimated $200 Million in Annual Profit
“Mercedes does an estimated two hundred million in operating income from Formula One now.”
The Mercedes Formula 1 Team's Valuation Grew From $165 Million to $6 Billion
“When he joined the team in 2013, he negotiated to own almost a third of the team, which at the time, the whole team was worth about one hundred and sixty five million. And it's now, 13 years later, worth six billion dollars.”
Formula 1 Teams Average $200 Million in Sponsorships, Comprising 60% of Revenue
“About 60% of the revenue comes from sponsorship, and the teams are now averaging about two hundred million dollars of total sponsorship per team, but average is kind of the wrong way to look at it because it varies wildly from front of the grid to back of the …”
Formula 1's Unequal Prize Money Distribution Creates Unbreakable Front-Runner Feedback Loops
“This is holding the sport back. In my opinion, you get a positive feedback loop and a negative feedback loop at the top and the bottom, and so we're sort of stuck in this world right now where the teams on the front four or five of the grid stay there and the …”
Formula 1's Revenue Share Distributed to Teams Plunged From 50% to 37%
“The percent of F-one management revenue that goes to teams, which was 50% back in 2018 and has shrunk to about 37% last year.”
Operational Excellence Trumps Strategy in Formula 1 Because Strategic Edges Are Quickly Arbitraged
“And so the thing that I would throw out here is I think skill or operational excellence is actually more important in building a successful F-one team than strategy, because a lot of these ways that you can win via strategy have a short window that closes
When…”
Gilbert: Formula 1's Future Growth Will Be a Slog Since Easy Levers Are Pulled
“A lot of the low hanging fruit that was available for Liberty to do is levers that they have pulled. So everything from here is going to be a little bit more of like a multi-decade slog than some easy, quick fixes.”
The Majority of US Formula 1 Fans May Never Watch Live Races
“There are lots of people who say they love F-one, who can name people, who will buy merch, who will associate and purchase from sponsors of teams, and who can tell you who won the championship last year, but will never tune in live. And that might be like the …”
Gilbert: Fantasy football and sports betting drove the NFL's modern dominance
“The thing that powered the NFL to be such a dominant force in society today is fantasy football and sports betting.”
Sports betting provides a $2.3B indirect annual benefit to the NFL
“Nielsen estimated the indirect impact like we were talking about on the league and in every way that it helps the flywheel to be about 2.3 billion dollars per year that the league benefits from the legalization of sports betting.”
The NFL added 4M female fans in Taylor Swift's first year
“In the first year of the relationship, September of 23 to September of 24, the NFL added four million female fans. The Chiefs were 3.4 million of those.”
Ben Gilbert: Internet niches aggregate millions globally despite local obscurity
“Niches are way bigger than you think they are.
So if you think you're writing about a niche topic, the internet being a global community of four-ish billion people means that any little niche, there might be six people in your geography that care about it in …”