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 2,685 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 35 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
Weber: Track Officials Ejected Brooks Execs From 2012 Olympic Trials
“They kicked me out, our head of marketing, and our head of sports marketing.”
Gerstner: Seeding investment accounts for every newborn would cost under $20B/year
“It doesn't cost a lot of money, right? In the scheme of things like this is less than twenty billion dollars a year for the federal government.”
Eich: Google Chrome Changed in 2018 to Auto-Sign In Users for Ad Tracking
“In 2018 September, Google said, gosh darn it, people aren't signing into the browser enough. We're going to just do it whenever you sign in to Gmail or YouTube in a tab. We'll just sign you in across all the tabs and we'll track you.”
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.”
Ithaca Holdings Sold Taylor Swift's Catalog to Shamrock for $300 Million
“Big Machine, the operating company, all the other masters of other artists, they have everything that stays with Ithaca Holdings. They sell only the Taylor masters to a private equity firm for about three hundred million dollars. So about the same price that t…”
CAA packaged 350 films and treated traditional studios strictly as distributors
“Or any of the 350 films that we packaged, Tootsie, Rain Man, go down a forever list, you had a choice. You'd, you'd buy the package, or we'd sell it to somebody else, because we viewed the studios as distribution entities.”
Matsushita gave Michael Ovitz $120 million to distribute among deal consultants
“They gave me a hundred and twenty million dollars to pass out to all of the consultants. And I passed out money to everybody generously, because we had Washington lobbyists, we had PR people.”
Bankman-Fried: The largest crypto exchange bled $1M daily from broken risk engines
“The biggest exchange at the time was bleeding each day about a million dollars of customer assets to a risk engine that didn't work.”
The Lion King musical is history's highest-grossing single entertainment product
“The Lion King musical has grossed over eleven billion dollars in total revenue in its run, which I think makes it the single highest grossing entertainment product in history, in any medium, film, music, TV, video games, other Broadway shows.”
Pixar's IPO made Steve Jobs a billionaire, creating more wealth than Apple
“Pixar closes its first day of trading, At a one and a half billion dollar market cap, this is how big a hit Toy Story was and how much it was in the public consciousness. This is how Steve Jobs becomes a billionaire... He didn't make anywhere near that kind of…”
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 …”
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…”
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.”
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.”
Disney merchandise royalties surpassed film rental revenue by 1934
“It wasn't even by the late 19 thirties. It was 1934.”
Walt Disney formed a private entity to build Disneyland after board rejection
“He is the Walt Disney who Has come up with a crazy new idea based on his obsessive hobby with model trains that the board of Disney Studios has basically rejected. And so he has gone full crackpot like Colonel Kurtz style and started his own separate company o…”
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…”
The famous Disney flywheel sketch was drawn for the Wall Street Journal
“So the legend that's out there that everybody believes is that this was a napkin sketch that Walt himself drew. No, it was actually created Buy a Disney Studio artist as an illustration for this Wall Street Journal piece.”
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…”
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.”
Rosenthal: The Lamborghini Urus shares its platform with the VW Touareg
“The Lamborghini Urus, the Lamborghini SUV, that is the same platform as the Porsche Cayenne, which is the same platform as the Volkswagen Touareg. When you buy a Lamborghini Urus, you are buying a car that is essentially a Volkswagen Touareg.”
Fiat paid virtually zero equity value to acquire Chrysler
“Fiat paid either zero or almost zero in sort of equity value for Chrysler.”
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.”
Court Records Revealed Bernie Ecclestone Skimmed an 8% Formula 1 Revenue Fee
“Nobody writes anything down, because Bernie never writes anything down, and when the dust finally gets settled, and many decades later, all of the books and stuff become public through a whole series of court cases, turns out Bernie's actually taking eight per…”
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…”
Bernie Ecclestone Bought the FIA's Formula 1 TV Rights for Under $10M
“Rather than you taking 30%, I'll pay you five million dollars a year, going up by one million every year, up to nine million at the end of this term, in exchange for your percentage of the TV.”
Russia Paid Formula 1 $50 Million Annually to Host the Sochi Race
“So they sign a deal with Russia. And of course it's a deal with the state. You know, anytime you're negotiating with Russia, you're negotiating with the state. To construct a new two hundred and seventy million dollar F-one track around the Olympic Park. And p…”
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 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.”
Only 23% of Gen Z consider the NFL their favorite sport
“And if you look at the data, US adults as a whole, 33% say the NFL is their favorite professional sports league. But if you look at Gen Z, only 23% of Gen Z say That the NFL is their favorite professional sport, so 10 points less than the broader population, a…”
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 traded NFL Network to ESPN for a 10% equity stake
“So August, 20, 25, the NFL reached a deal with Disney and ESPN to essentially sell the NFL network, the NFL's cable network and the NFL's official fantasy app to ESPN for a 10% equity stake in all of ESPN in return for this swap.”
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.”
The NFL skims a share of private equity exit returns for all owners
“Upon any eventual sale or monetization of the ownership stake that private equity would have in an NFL franchise, A portion of the returns on that investment get skimmed off the top and go back to the NFL and then get distributed equally among all 32 NFL team …”
Morris Chang told Acquired TSMC's solar and memory diversification was a mistake
“We were sitting down with Morris Chang, and he was talking about TSMC, and he told us that one of the ways that they aired was trying to exit the integrated circuit market, or diversify from that market, and go into solar.
Memories, and there was one other thi…”
Rosenthal: Coca-Cola's Robert Woodruff backed segregationist politicians in the 1940s
“In fact, Robert Woodruff was openly supporting segregationist politicians during this time.”
Late 1950s McCann taste tests showed consumers preferred Pepsi over Coke
“Consumers, when presented with the two drinks, Coke and Pepsi, in a blind taste test, a statistically significant number of people prefer Pepsi. The taste of Pepsi.”
New Coke actually beat original Coke and Pepsi in blind taste tests
“They've done tons of taste tests. Not only does it beat Pepsi in taste tests, it beats original Coke. People prefer the taste of new Coke.”
Coca-Cola labeled the original formula 'Classic' to renegotiate its bottler contracts
“And Coke and their lawyers ultimately decide That if they keep new Coke on the market as the official Coke, and they call the old Coke, Coca-Cola classic. They can make an argument to all the bottlers. The Coca-Cola classic is a new drink.”
Gilbert: FOIA records reveal major CPG brands behind Trader Joe's private-label
“Eater, the website, submitted a FOIA request to the US government to the USDA and the FDA. To figure out, via food recalls, who makes Trader Joe's items. And by the Freedom of Information Act, they have to provide that information. And so there's a whole bunch…”
Gilbert: Trader Joe's pays its suppliers cash on delivery
“You just have cash as soon as you drop something off at their loading dock. This gives them a huge edge of being a preferred customer for these vendors. That those companies never have any cash flow issue or a waiting issue. As soon as they drop it off, Trader…”