PM — Big Tech is going big on live sports

It’s another one of those summer afternoons that’s not packed with news but not quite what we would call a slow news day, ladies and gentlemen, with enough happening on both the local and global fronts to keep us busy.

THE BIG STORY TODAY

Could Aldar be investing more in Egypt soon? The UAE’s Aldar Properties is eyeing investments in the UAE and Egypt, where it sees potential to invest another USD 1.5 bn over the next 6-12 months, CEO Talal Al Dhiyebi told BloombergTV (watch, runtime: 6:17). The company — which together with Abu Dhabi wealth fund ADQ acquired SODIC last year — currently has USD 1.5 bn to deploy, Al Dhiyebi said, without specifying how much it could invest in Egypt specifically.

THE BIG STORY ABROAD

Laskavo prosymo, Ukrainian grain: A ship carrying Ukrainian corn left from the port of Odesa earlier today for the first time since Russia’s invasion of the country in February, according to a statement by the Joint Coordination Centre (JCC), which was established as part of the UN and Turkey-brokered wheat pact signed last month between Moscow and Kyiv. The ship is expected to arrive at the inspection location in Turkey’s territorial waters tomorrow before taking its cargo to Lebanon’s Tripoli.

The story is leading coverage in the international press: The Financial Times | Bloomberg | The Washington Post | Reuters

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** CATCH UP QUICK on the top stories from today’s EnterpriseAM:

• Could B Investments pre-empt Adnoc’s bid for TotalEnergies Egypt? Private equity outfit B Investments is “evaluating all options” after Adnoc Distribution agreed to buy 50% of TotalEnergies Egypt last week, B Investments IR head Omar El Labban told Enterprise.
• Delta Sugar has denied knowledge of a rumored acquisition bid by Abu Dhabi wealth fund ADQ, saying in a disclosure (pdf) to the EGX yesterday that it has not received any offers.
• Egypt wants to attract USD 10 bn of foreign direct investment during the current fiscal year, Planning Minister Hala El Said said.

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???? CIRCLE YOUR CALENDAR-

PMI out on Wednesday: We’ll get an idea of how the private sector fared in July when S&P Global releases its latest purchasing managers’ index (PMI) on Wednesday. The index fell to its lowest level in two years in June as surging inflation hit demand and output.

The National Dialogue board will talk about the economy this week: The board of trustees overseeing preparations for the National Dialogue will meet Wednesday to discuss the economic agenda.

LATER THIS MONTH-

• Foreign reserves figures for July will likely be released at the end of this week or the beginning of the next;
• Inflation data for July will land on Wednesday, 10 August.
• Interest rates: The Central Bank of Egypt will meet to discuss interest rates on 18 August.

PSA- Kids have another few days to apply to STEM schools for the coming school year: The Education Ministry will continue to accept applications to STEM schools via its website until Wednesday, 3 August, after receiving many requests from students who were not able to register in time, it announced in a statement yesterday.

Check out our full calendar on the web for a comprehensive listing of upcoming news events, national holidays and news triggers.

☀️ TOMORROW’S WEATHER- Expect temperatures to rise to 40°C during the day tomorrow before falling to 24°C at night, our favorite weather app tells us.

The William Herschel Telescope (WHT) just got supercharged to map 1K stars per hour, helping us investigate the origins of the Milky Way in detail. A super-fast mapping device, Weave, will place a light-transmitting tube on the precise location of each star in a patch of sky the WHT is pointed at, according to BBC. Effectively tiny telescopes in their own right, an individual tube captures light from each of the thousands of stars in a patch of sky and channels it to another instrument, which then splits it into a rainbow spectrum. Weave will be able to calculate the speed, direction, age and composition of each star observed, creating a moving map of the stars and reconstructing the formation of the Milky Way in a level of detail never seen before.

Want to imagine a busy Cairo street as a space with more greenery? DALL-E, a text-to-image program powered by San Francisco based AI lab company Open AI, creates photorealistic images drawn from a text prompt. Artist and former open-street activist Zach Katz has used DALL-E to reimagine urban areas around the world, with changes as drastic as turning a busy highway into a park or as minimal as adding sidewalks to one of his hometown roads, Bloomberg reported. The program is a much cheaper way to create renders, which could be used to visualize a way to transform urban spaces, Katz said. DALL-E, whose name is a mix between artist Salvador Dalí and the Pixar robot WALL-E, was released in January last year. Its second version, DALL-E 2, was released to journalists and artists earlier this year.

???? ON THE TUBE TONIGHT-
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The cut-throat world of high finance: Industry is an HBO British-American television drama series that follows the lives of young graduates competing for limited entry-level positions at a prestigious London-headquartered investment bank. Co-creators and finance and industry veterans, Mickey Down and Konrad Kaya, modeled the fictional firm on their experiences working in the cut-throat world of high finance, giving viewers an authentic and realistic perspective. The show follows a cohort of fresh grads from all walks of life, including Yasmin, a posh and well-connected child of Lebanese parents, Harper, a Black American hiding a secret about her university degree, and Robert, an Oxford graduate. The graduates face the casual racism, sexism, and bullying that frequent the firm’s office floor and struggle to cope with the drug culture and increasingly toxic workplace. The show is available to stream on OSN+, with the second season dropping today.

⚽ The Egyptian Premier League: Zamalek FC and Pyramids face off tonight at 9pm. Zamalek currently tops the league with 63 points and Pyramids is just four points behind with 59 points.

With just seven matches left in the league, victory tonight would boost Zamalek’s chances of landing the title for the second consecutive season, which last occurred 19 years ago, when they walked away with the league title in the 2002-2003 and 2003-2004 seasons. Zamalek were also just crowned Egypt Cup champions last month.

Victory for Pyramids would mean reducing the gap to one point, and inching closer to the top of the league. Al Ahly is not far behind in third place, four points behind Pyramids with 55 points, but with a postponed match.

Other matches in the league: Ismaili meets Misr Lel Makassa and Al Ahly Bank faces El Gouna at 6:30pm tonight.

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Beit El Comedy returns to the Tap West’s stage tonight at 9pm with a lineup of Egyptian comedians featuring Marwan Elmoslemany, Abdelrahman Magdy, Gamal Ramzy and Badr Nour.

Don’t miss a performance of authentic Egyptian songs by Saad El Oud at Room Art Space New Cairo tonight at 9pm tonight.

???? UNDER THE LAMPLIGHT-

Atomic Habits is a must-read for those of you with bad habits you just can’t kick (ahem, nail-biters): Author James Clear outlines a life-changing framework for forming good habits and breaking bad ones. The New York Times best seller explains that we repeat bad habits over and over not because we are reluctant to change, but because we have the wrong system for change. The idea of systems over goals is to ditch goal-setting and focus on the process of building habits: “You don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.” According to Clear, the most effective way to change your habits is to focus on becoming the type of person who can achieve results, rather than on the results themselves. Despite drawing on complicated topics from biology, psychology, and neuroscience, Clear is able to extract simple behaviors from them that we can easily apply every day. The book features real stories about doctors, CEOs, and Olympic gold medalists that have been able to use small routine practices to achieve success in their respective fields.

The EGX30 fell 0.5% at today’s close on turnover of EGP 1.11 bn (26.8% above the 90-day average). Foreign investors were net sellers. The index is down 21.1% YTD.

In the green: GB Auto (+2.5%), e-Finance (+2.2%) and Alexandria Container and Cargo Handling (+2.1%).

In the red: Heliopolis Housing (-3.8%), Medinet Nasr Housing (-2.8%) and Fawry (-2.5%).

The titans of big tech are getting into live sports: Tech giants like Apple and Amazon, who already have a hand in the streaming game, have been busy planning their entry into live sports broadcasting, and are now going toe-to-toe with traditional broadcasters to get the rights to screen major sports competitions like the National Football League, Major League Baseball, and Formula One racing, the New York Times reports.

It hasn’t been a great year for streaming as increasing competition and the rising cost of living put pressure on providers. Netflix, the biggest streamer in the world, lost more than 1 mn subscribers q-o-q in 2Q 2022 and announced job cuts as rivals gain ground. It's not just Netflix that has been losing subscribers, though: Consumer data from the UK shows that users canceled 1.66 mn streaming services in the second quarter alone due to an inflation-fueled squeeze on household budgets.

But streaming services are pivoting to the sports market: Tech companies are now looking to overtake US cable companies like DirecTV for the rights to broadcast major sporting events and overcome some of the challenges in the industry by adding sports entertainment to their offerings. Right now, sports comprise 95 of the 100 most viewed programs on US TV and are considered one of the safest ways to expand a base of paying subscribers.

And they’re going all in: Apple has already agreed to double the figure US Major League Soccer (MLS) typically charges for annual rights in the form of a 10 year USD 2.5 bn transaction that would give Apple the global rights to some 1k games. Amazon, meanwhile, signed off on a USD 1 bn agreement to broadcast weekly NFL games in addition to placing a USD 100 mn bid for the annual rights to show Formula One races in the US — which it ultimately lost to ESPN who renewed their rights for the agreement at a staggering 15 times the value of its previous contract, according to Sports Business Journal.

This isn’t totally a new thing: Amazon Prime has been screening a limited number of Premier League games in the UK since 2019 and will start screening Champions League games from 2024.

The live sports market is super hot right now: Media companies are expected to dish out about double what they spent on live sports a decade ago, according to the NYT. Major media players like Disney, Comcast, Paramount, and Fox are projected to spend some USD 24.2 bn on rights to broadcast sports in 2024.

Tech’s entry into sports broadcasting is spooking traditional entertainment companies who worry that they won’t be able to compete against companies that “aren’t playing by the same financial rules,” former CEO and chairman of the Walt Disney Company, Bob Iger, told the Gray Lady.

Cable television in the US has been steadily losing out to streaming services: Cable television has lost some 25 mn paying customers, or a quarter of their subscribers, since 2015, according to MoffettNathanson, an investment firm that tracks the industry.

This all comes despite traditional wisdom in the streaming industry that once shunned sport: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings had famously dismissed sports and news because they were never watched more than once — a view shared by others in the industry until recent challenges prompted a re-think.

But some believe cable isn’t over just yet: Cable television typically offers the largest audiences (some 100 mn at their peak) which is a significant factor in many of these sports leagues’ calculations who find reach to be essential to maintaining long term interest in their sport. “Most sports and media executives predict that the league will stick with traditional broadcasters for most of its games,” according to the New York Times.

Cable companies are ready to fight back: US cable companies are facing off with tech giants by spinning out their own in-house streaming services that might potentially keep tech-owned streaming services away from their market. Over the past few years companies like Comcast and ESPN attempted to build out their own streaming platforms but have struggled to attract a decent number of their cable viewers over to streaming.

Tech companies might be better off looking elsewhere for new subscribers: As long as US sports leagues look to stay put with their traditional broadcasting infrastructure Amazon and Apple might find better luck looking to Europe, where football leagues sell rights in more frequent intervals every two to three years.