Just four days into the new year, awards season kicked off with the Critics Choice Awards. One week later, it’s time for the Golden Globes to shine.
The 83rd edition of this star-studded eventwhich takes place on Sunday, January 11, in Beverly Hills, Californiacelebrates greatness in both television and film. Heres everything you need to know about the big night, including how to tune in.
History and past controversy of the Golden Globe Awards
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), the former organization behind the Golden Globes, was founded in 1943. Under this banner, journalists came together to create an awards ceremony to honor the artists they covered. The first event took place the following year, in 1944.
A 2021 Los Angeles Times article revealed several issues within the HFPA, including a complete lack of Black members. This caused many organizations and individuals to boycott the 2022 Globes. NBC declined to air the ceremony, Tom Cruise gave awards back, and several studios distanced themselves.
Because of HFPAs many issues, the organization was dissolved and the Globes were sold to Penske Media Eldridge, becoming a for-profit institution.
Many are critical of this venture, viewing it as a conflict of interest, as the L.A. Times reported. Penske also owns Dick Clark Productions, the producer of the Globes, and several trade publications such as Variety, Rolling Stone, and The Hollywood Reporter.
Who is hosting the 83rd Golden Globes?
Despite the ongoing debate, the show must go on. Funny lady Nikki Glaser will emcee the event for her second year in a row.
She will be backed up by many talented presenters, such as George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Macaulay Culkin, Kevin Hart, Snoop Dogg, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Queen Latifah, and Regina Hall.
Heated Rivalry fans will delight in seeing stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie outside of the “boy aquarium.”
Where are the 83rd Golden Globes being held?
The 2026 Golden Globes Awards will take place at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. This has been its permanent venue since 1961.
Who is being honored at the 83rd Golden Globes?
This is the first year that the Globes are presenting Golden Week, featuring multiple events leading up to the big night.
One of these is a new prime-time special called Golden Eve, during which the Cecil B. DeMille Award and the Carol Burnett Award, for outstanding contributions in film and television, will be formally presented.
Helen Mirren will receive the former, and Sarah Jessica Parker, the latter. This event aired on Thursday, January 8, but if you missed it, you can watch it after the fact on Paramount+.
Who is nominated for a 2026 Golden Globe Award?
In the movie world, One Battle After Another, Paul Thomas Andersons dark action comedy, leads the pack with nine nominations.
Closely on its heels is the Norwegian film Sentimental Value, starring Stellan Skarsgrd. Ryan Cooglers Sinners has seven nods, while Chloé Zhaos Hamnet received six.
Both Wicked: For Good and Frankenstein were honored with five nominations.
In the television realm, HBOs White Lotus continues its dominance at the Globes with six nominations, while all of Netflixs shows combined received 22.
The proposed merger between Netflix and HBO’s parent company could potentially increase Netflixs laurels. Adolescence came in second place with five nods. Only Murders in the Building and Severance tied for third with four each.
How to watch the Golden Globes pre-show
If you are in it for the fashion, you have red-carpet-arrivals viewing options. The official Golden Globes pre-show will be hosted by Varietys Marc Malkin and Angelique Jackson. It begins at 6:30 p.m. ET and can be viewed for free on Fire TV, Varietys YouTube channel, or Variety.com.
Live From E!: Golden Globes 2026 will be hosted by Zuri Hall, Justin Sylvester, and Keltie Knight from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. ET. It is available on the E! network and Peacock.
How to watch the 83rd Golden Globes
Now onto the main event: The 83rd Golden Globes ceremony will air on the CBS broadcast network and on the Paramount+ streaming service.
The awards take place tonight (Sunday, January 11) from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET.
You will need the Paramount+ Premium service to stream the event in real time. Those with Paramount+ Essential subscriptions will have to wait until the next day to view the awards show.
If Paramount+ is not in your streaming arsenal, consider other live-TV streaming services that carry CBS, such as DirecTV, Fubo, or Hulu + Live TV.
Just be sure to double-check regional differences before committing to another monthly subscription.
And remember that CBS is free if you have an over-the-air antenna.
When the inevitable robot uprising comes, Ill be ready, thanks to some valuable lessons I picked up at CES. First, if given the choice of a dance off versus hand to hand combat, opt for the fight. Second, wear a cup when you do.
Robotics company Unitree showcased its G-1 humanoid robot at the show. The G-1 is a rarity in the robotic world in that its already on the market for under $15,000. Unitrees booth was an ongoing spectacle, surrounded by people eager for a close look at the dapperlooking unit, wearing a white shirt and button down vest, showcasing impressive dance skills, throwing down moves that even Shabba-Doo and Bugaloo Shrimp could respect.
There was another G-1, too — this one with a decidedly more combative directive.
By sheer luck, I found myself being asked if I’d like to strap on the gloves and go a round with the G-1. After being force-fed the technology for the better part of a week, I wasnt going to turn down an opportunity to whale on a robot.
The fight seemed fixed from the start, though. The G-1 had headgear. None was offered to myself or any other meatbag who stepped into the ring. Its gloves were a cherry red pair from Everlast. The ones velcro’d onto my hands? Salmon colored.
As the fight started, I knew I had a few advantages and a few disadvantages. The robot had me beat on strength and stamina, but I had the reach on it. I also had just enough boxing knowledge to know that the best approach was a combination of jabs and upper cuts and to keep my distance.
What I didn’t count on was that my height advantage meant that when the robot began swinging, it was mostly at crotch level.
I landed several solid shots on its chest cavity, sometimes hard enough to push it back and make it stagger — but, good grief, can that thing take a hit. It just kept coming.
The G-1 was terrible at protecting its head, so I focused my next round of punches square in where its nose would have been, had it had to worry about things like oxygen (which, by that point, I was gulping). That hardly slowed it down, but it might have caused some traumatic cranial injuries, as the robot then threw a wild punch combination in the air, completely off target.
In the interest of science, I did allow it to land a few hits (with my hip turned). While it wasnt utilizing all of its robotic strength when it hit me, I could feel it.
After about four minutes, the robot laid down on the ground and pretended to be knocked out — the company’s way of saying “Ok, time for someone else to have a turn.” When it hopped back up, we posed for a picture together. But I swear it looked ready to throw a few more jabs my way.
There are few things more evocative of the free American spirit and the nations wide-open spaces than the image of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle zooming down a stretch of empty highway. But while taking one of the legendary hogs for a spin may still be liberating for riders, the companys independent dealership owners are feeling an increasingly tight financial and business squeeze.
A rash of reports in recent weeks have sounded alarms about the troubles Harley dealers face, and the rising number of dealerships closing shop as a result. While Harley-Davidson still counts more than 650 of those locations in operation across the U.S., specialist automotive media warn that those numbers have been significantly decreasing as sales of the beefy motorcycles decline, and dealer operating costs grow.
I hate to admit this, but there are too many dealers for the number of new vehicles that are being sold today, second-generation Harley dealership owner George Gatto told the motorcycle publication RevZilla. Margins on the new bikes are the worst weve ever seen . . . Theyre not making any money.
As a result, owners of a growing number of Harley-Davidson dealerships have hung the Closed sign for good. Those include some well-known, high-profile stores in New York City and Florida, and the century-old Dudley Perkins location in San Francisco. But reports say many more closures in smaller cities and towns across the U.S. drew far less attention while adding to the tally of shuttered businesses.
That turn of events marks a swift reversal of Harley-Davidsons fortunes, and now leaves many independent dealers and the mother company itself fighting for survival.
As was the case with many companies selling comparatively expensive goods, the effects of COVID-19 created a sales boom for Harley-Davidson and its dealers. Government stimulus checks and rock-bottom interest rates allowed some consumers whod never had the money to afford a hog to buy one after 2020. More conservative consumers whod had the funds but waited also took the plunge.
Meanwhile, as happened in the auto sector, disrupted supply chains limited Harley inventories, allowing dealers to charge top dollar to customers they added to increasingly long waiting lists. Business had never been so good.
Flush with rising revenue, many dealership owners splurged on upgrades and expansions of their showrooms. Those who didnt were eventually obliged to do so by Harley-Davidson corporate policies that require dealers to abide by centralized rules, and adopt decisions made by the mothership.
But once those dealership improvement investments were madedriving occupation, heat, and maintenance costs higher as a resultthe sales boom petered out. Consumers facing spiking inflation, rising interest rates, tightening job markets, and other hardening realities of post-pandemic life could no longer give $24,000 to $40,000 Harleys another thought.
But at the same time, motorcycles churned out by manufacturers seeking to catch up with demand continued flowing into showrooms, further boosting dealer inventory costs. The same was true of Harley-Davidson-branded motorcycle equipment.
Even as that gear gushed into dealerships, Harley-Davidson corporate managers continued developing their booming e-commerce platform, which cut out intermediaries like dealers by selling directly to consumers.
They overproduced, so what do they do? Gatto said of the converging developments that cost dealers dearly. They mark it down 40%, 50%, 60% online, with free shipping. Why would you go into a dealership when youre getting half off online?
According to the recent reports, Harley-Davidsons corporate leadershipnow led by new CEO Artie Starrs, who took over in Octoberresponded to the downturn by shrinking the list of centralized rules dealers must follow. The company reduced other requirements, including minimum inventory volumes, to help ease financial pressure on dealership owners.
While that may ease some of the pain, the fear is that continually falling demand may prove the far more dangerous threat. The COVID-era boom aside, Harley-Davidsons unit sales have dropped by 45% over the past decade. That was again reflected in the companys third quarter 2025 results, which reported a global sales decline of 6%5% in the U.S.
Those latter figures led Morningstar analyst Jaime Katz to warn that it will take a lot of work, and a lasting return of robust sales, for Harley-Davidson and its independent dealers to start riding easy again.
There is little evidence that a recovery for motorcycle demand is in the cards anytime soon, Katz wrote in an investors memo following third-quarter results. After multiple years of inventory reduction at dealers, the firm has yet to find equilibrium and has signaled further unit reductions to protect dealer profitability.
By Bruce Crumley
This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister site, Inc.com.
Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
When a grizzly bear attacked a group of fourth- and fifth-graders in western Canada in late November 2025, it sparked more than a rescue effort for the 11 people injuredfour with severe injuries. Local authorities began trying to find the specific bear that was involved in order to relocate or euthanize it, depending on the results of their assessment.
The attack, in Bella Coola, British Columbia, was very unusual bear behavior and sparked an effort to figure out exactly what had happened and why. That meant finding the bear involvedwhich, based on witness statements, was a mother grizzly with two cubs.
Searchers combed the area on foot and by helicopter and trapped four bears. DNA comparisons to evidence from the attack cleared each of the trapped bears, and they were released back to the wild. After more than three weeks without finding the bear responsible for the attack, officials called off the search.
The case highlights the difficulty of identifying individual bears, which becomes important when one is exhibiting unusual behavior. Bears tend to look a lot alike to people, and untrained observers can have a very hard time telling them apart. DNA testing is excellent for telling individuals apart, but it is expensive and requires physical samples from bears. Being trapped and having other contact with humans is also stressful for them, and wildlife managers often seek to minimize trapping.
Recent advances in computer vision and other types of artificial intelligence offer a possible alternative: facial recognition for bears.
As a cultural anthropologist, I study how scientists produce knowledge and technologies, and how new technology is transforming ecological science and conservation practices. Some of my research has looked at the work of computer scientists and ecologists making facial recognition for animals. These tools, which reflect both technological advances and broader popular interest in wildlife, can reshape how scientists and the general public understand animals by getting to know formerly anonymous creatures as individuals.
New ways to identify animals
A facial recognition tool for bears called BearID is under development by computer scientists Ed Miller and Mary Nguyen, working with Melanie Clapham, a behavioral ecologist working for the Nanwakolas Council of First Nations, conducting applied research on grizzly bears in British Columbia.
It uses deep learning, a subset of machine learning that makes use of artificial neural networks, to analyze images of bears and identify individual animals. The photos are drawn from a collection of images taken by naturalists at Knight Inlet, British Columbia, and by National Park Service staff and independent photographers at Brooks River in Katmai National Park, Alaska.
Bears bodies change dramatically from post-hibernation skinny in the spring to fat and ready for winter in the fall. However, the geometry of each bears facethe arrangement of key features like their eyes and noseremains relatively stable over seasons and years.
BearID uses an algorithm to locate bear faces in pictures and make measurements between those key features. Each animal has a unique set of measurements, so a photograph of one taken yesterday can be matched with an image taken some time ago.
In addition to helping identify bears that have attacked humans or are otherwise causing trouble for people, identifying bears can help ecologists and wildlife managers more accurately estimate bear population sizes. And it can help scientific research, like the behavioral ecology projects Clapham works on, by allowing individual tracking of animals and thus better understanding of bear behavior.
Miller has built a web tool to automatically detect bears in the webcams from Brooks River that originally inspired the project. The BearID team has also been working with Rebecca Zug, a professor and director of the carnivore lab at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, to develop a bear identification model for Andean bears to use in bear ecology and conservation research in Ecuador.
Animal faces are less controversial
Human facial recognition is extremely controversial. In 2021, Meta ended the use of its face recognition system, which automatically identified people in photographs and videos uploaded to Facebook. The company described it as a powerful technology that, while potentially beneficial, was currently not suitable for widespread use on its platform.
In the years following that announcement, Meta gradually reintroduced facial recognition technology, using it to detect scams involving public figures and to verify users identities after their accounts had been breached.
When used on humans, critics have called facial recognition technology the plutonium of AI and a dangerous tool with few legitimate uses. Even as facial recognition has become more widespread, researchers remain convinced of its dangers. Researchers at the American Civil Liberties Union highlight the continued threat to Americans constitutional rights posed by facial recognition and the harms caused by inaccurate identifications.
For wildlife, the ethical controversies are perhaps less pressing, although there is still potential for animals to be harmed by people who are using AI systems. And facial recognition could help wildlife managers identify and euthanize or relocate bears that are causing significant problems for people.
A focus on specific animals
Wildlife ecologists sometimes find focusing on individual animals problematic. Naming animals may make them seem less wild. Names that carry cultural meaning can also frame peoples interpretations of animal behavior. As the Katmai rangers note, humans may interpret the behaviors of a bear named Killer differently than one named Fluffy.
Wildlife management decisions are meant to be made about groups of animals and areas of territory. When people become connected to individual animals, including by naming them, decisions become more complicated, whether in the wild or in captivity.
When people connect with particular animals, they may object to management decisions that harm individuals for the sake of the health of the population as a whole. For example, wildlife managers may need to move or euthanize animals for the health of the broader population or ecosystem.
But knowing and understanding bears as individual animals can also deepen the fascination and connections people already have with bears.
For example, Fat Bear Week, an annual competition hosted by explore.org and Katmai National Park, drew over a million votes in 2025 as people campaigned and voted for their favorite bear. The winner was Bear 32, also known as Chunk. Chunk was identified in photographs and videos the old-fashioned way, based on human observations of distinguishing characteristicssuch as a large scar across his muzzle and a broken jaw.
In addition to identifying problematic animals, I believe algorithmic tools like facial recognition could help an even broader audience of humans deepen their understanding of bears as a whole by connecting with one or two specific animals.
Emily Wanderer is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
However uncertain the outlook is for the American auto industry in the age of tariffs, growing competition from China, and the rise of EV upstarts, the view inside the new boardroom at General Motors is stylishly optimistic.
Part of the automaker’s new corporate headquarters that’s opening January 12, the boardroom is a large and elegant space with a massive marble table surrounded by mainstay elements of mid-century modern design. Fluted wood wall treatments, subtle curves, geometric overhead lighting, minimalist bench seating, and sweeping views of a changing downtown Detroit combine to create a physical manifestation of how GM sees itself evolving through the 21st centurydrawing on the past while looking to the future.
When so much of the car industry can feel tossed in an ever-changing sea, the boardroom and the rest of GM’s headquarters evoke a steadier throughline of ambition and legacy.
[Photo: GM]
“It’s culture setting,” says David Massaron, GM’s vice president of infrastructure and corporate citizenship. “I think this space really does a great job of being a beacon of who we want to be, what our identity is. … A headquarters really serves as a reinforcing notion of our culture, of who we are.”
[Photo: GM]
Filling four floors and about 200,000 square feet in a brand-new 12-story tower in Detroit, the headquarters will serve as permanent office space for GM executives and employees in the finance, legal, marketing, and communications departments, and will have open workstations. In contrast to GM’s previous headquarters in the troubled Renaissance Center complex a mile away, the new space is much smaller and more manageable, with room for hundreds of employees, not thousands.
Its design draws heavily on GM’s past. The overarching design language of the space comes from the mid-century modern design of the company’s main real estate footprint, the GM Technical Center, in suburban Warren, Michigan.
[Photo: GM]
Designated a National Historic Landmark, the complex first opened in 1956 with a stunning design by architect Eero Saarinen that let modernist design loose on corporate America and accelerated its infusion into the homes, furnishings, and products of the post-war world. Saarinen’s streamlined design put an emphasis on natural materials and light, and brought art into and around the buildings on the campus in a holistic way.
[Photo: GM]
Crystal Windham, GM’s executive director of global industrial design, says that legacy deeply influenced her team’s approach to the new headquarters space, which was designed with the Gensler architecture firm. Elements of mid-century modernism, and Saarinen’s Technical Center specifically, wound their way into the headquarters in a wide variety of forms, from furniture pieces and material choices to the artwork on the walls.
“Because of the history and the respect for that, there are all types of interpretations here. There are details within it that you can play up or play down. It’s a full palette of moments to pull from,” Windham says.
Some elements are literal recreations. On the wall next to a waiting area outside top executive offices, steel picture frames that mount to the floor and ceiling are near-exact replicas of frames Saarinen designed for the Technical Center campus.
[Photo: GM]
Other items are drawn directly from GM’s large archive. Historic drawings from the company’s 49,000-deep setof patent applications are peppered throughout the space, including in a ring of wallpaper near the top of the building’s atrium. Other notable patents are framed in executives’ officesa mechanical heart in CEO Mary Barra’s, and the first automatic gearshift changer in president Mark Reuss’s.
Scale models of cars, old and new, can be seen in almost any direction. Touches of automotive materials can also be found throughout the space, from throw pillows made out of the interior fabric used in 1956 Cadillacs to chrome pendant lights that recall muscle car tailpipes.
[Photo: GM]
“What we loved when we were working on this project was just going back and relooking at our history,” says Rebecca Waldmeir, design manager of architecture and experience at GM. “[Saarinen] would say that when you’re trying to design spaces to relate to each other, they need to sing the same message. We need to sing some of that message into our space, too.”
This ethos has made its way into the otherwise contemporary setting of this new 12-story mixed-use building in the heart of downtown Detroit. Alongside a 49-story hotel and condo tower, the building is part of the $1.4 billion Hudson’s Detroit project developed by Bedrock, the real estate firm that billionaire Dan Gilbert has steered to redeveloping large swaths of Detroit’s once-crumbling downtown.
[Photo: GM]
For all its effort in honoring a rich design legacy, the headquarters is still a headquarters, with spaces made for the work of a multibillion-dollar corporation to get done. The executive offices and other hoteling workspaces are outfitted with office furniture from Halcon, and there’s at least one Eames lounge chair on the premises.
[Photo: GM]
Shared workspaces are buffered from more active circulation areas, and most of the main executive areas have lounge-like waiting spaces that can double as informal meeting spaces during downtimes. That huge marble table in the executive boardroom was fabricated in GM’s own facilitytypically used to make concept cars and scale modelsand designed to have a solid flat surface free of the holes and ports of modern IT equipment. All that infrastructure is hidden away.
[Photo: GM]
“We wanted, first of all, for the look and feel to be appropriately placed for the time, to be timeless in and of itself, and the layout to be very flexible for many uses and very open and collaborative,” Windham says.
[Photo: GM]
The design also left room for some intentionally contemporary elements. A hallway on each floor features a series of artworks that turn the sound signatures of GM vehicles into abstracted soundwaves. And a vestibule outside the bathrooms on the executive floor is decorated with custom-made wallpaper showing stacks of cassette tapes of some of the estimated 80,000 songs that reference GM carsfrom “Little Red Corvette” and “Pink Cadillac” to the countless country songs featuring Chevy trucks.
[Photo: GM]
The mere existence of this headquarters carries its own message, as GM leaves the Renaissanc Center. Plans are still forming between GM and Bedrock over how to deal with the largely empty 5-million-square-foot space, but GM isn’t looking back. The new headquartersa much smaller footprint, more centrally located in a resurgent downtownrepresents a new chapter for the company’s long history of innovation.
“Being in the middle of the city, being part of that vibrancy is really leaning into the dynamic change that the industry is going through,” Massaron says. “We’re trying to remind ourselves and the world that we’re ready to lead and we’re going to continue to lead.”
Most business leaders view themselves primarily as “productive” rather than “creative.” Productivity is often associated with measurable outcomes, such as efficiency, consistency, and task completion. Creativity, by contrast, is frequently perceived as spontaneous, unpredictable, and elusive. Yet, productivity and creativity are not at odds. In fact, they reinforce each other powerfully.
Leaders who successfully integrate productive habits with creative practices can unlock new levels of innovation, effectiveness, and personal fulfillment. A global Adobe survey found that 75% of professionals report growing pressure to be productive rather than creative at work, while only 25% believe theyre living up to their creative potential. This creativity gap reveals a systemic imbalance: leaders may be achieving efficiency, but theyre underperforming on innovation.
Productivity Without Creativity Leads to Stagnation
Many leaders find themselves trapped in cycles of productivity: checking off tasks, hitting deadlines, and running efficient meetings. However, overemphasizing productivity metrics at the expense of creativity can lead to stagnation, disengagement, and missed opportunities for innovation. According to Gallup, disengagement costs the global economy $8.8 trillion annually. And disengaged leaders set the tone for disengaged teams. In our work with executives, we often hear the same lament: Im getting things done, but I dont feel like I am getting anywhere. The problem isnt a lack of effort. Its that productivity without creativity produces motion without momentum.
Creativity Needs Discipline
The myth of creativity is that it arrives in spontaneous bursts of inspiration. In reality, creativity flourishes when it rests on a foundation of discipline. Cliff knows this from his dual roles. As a songwriter, he leans on courage, openness, and uncertainty. As a recording engineer, he thrives on precision, technical structure, and predictable workflow. Each role strengthens the other. The order of the studio makes space for creative leaps in songwriting. The risks of songwriting push him to keep the studio at peak performance.
Similarly, in my own work, Ive seen how structure creates room for insight. In leadership workshops, I utilize tools like the Illuminated Cubea reflective exercise that provides a framework for individuals to surface their hidden strengths. The structure isnt the end; its the container that makes creativity possible.
As organizational psychologist Adam Grant points out, productivity isnt about more output; its about quality output. And quality often comes from pairing disciplined focus with creative risk-taking. In Grants view, a disciplined focus allows individuals to produce fewer, higher-quality ideas that have a greater overall impact. Disciplined practice also builds the resilience needed to navigate creative challenges and maintain consistency.
Your Spaces Matter, Too
Leaders often underestimate the impact of their environment. But organized spacesboth physical and mentalmake breakthroughs more likely. Cliffs recording studio is a model of meticulous organization. Everything is in its place, technically reliable, and ready to go. That structure frees him to explore ideas in songwriting, knowing the foundations wont fail. He also maintains a daily haiku practicea tiny ritual that trains his creative muscles consistently over time.
Small practices like these work for leaders too: quick journaling, five-minute brainstorms, reflective pauses before meetings. These micro-habits signal to the brain: This is a space where creativity belongs.
Kate ONeill, founder of KO Insights, employs similar strategies, using structured prompts and systematic reminders to maintain consistent creative output amidst demanding productivity schedules. This disciplined consistency allows ONeill to seamlessly integrate creativity into her everyday activities, resulting in more impactful and innovative work.
Incorporating small, consistent creative rituals into daily routines can significantly improve leadership effectiveness. Activities like quick journaling, brief brainstorming sessions, or reflective writing help leaders systematically foster creativity, encouraging long-term innovation and adaptability.
The Creative-Productive Zone
The biggest shift is identity. Too many leaders see themselves as either productive or creative. But the most impactful leaders integrate both. For me, this came from reconciling two identities: The strategist and the artist. For years, I thought of them as separate worlds. However, when I began blending artistic practicessuch as visual thinking, storytelling, and pattern-makinginto my leadership development work, my impact expanded. Creativity didnt dilute my productivity; it deepened it.
Cliffs path illustrates the same lesson. His creativity as a songwriter is inseparable from the technical precision of his engineering work. Together, they create a rhythm of freedom within structure. This integration is what we call the creative-productive zone: a state where structure supports exploration and exploration fuels progress.
How to Harness Productivity and Creativity Together
Bringing productivity and creativity into balance doesnt happen by accident; it requires intention. The good news is that you dont need sweeping overhauls to start. Often, its the smallest shifts in routine and mindset that unlock the most significant breakthroughs. By making space for both discipline and imagination, leaders create the conditions where innovation feels less like a gamble and more like a habit. Here are four practical ways leaders can start today:
1. Build Creative Rituals into Routine. Add small, repeatable practicesa haiku, a sketch, a reflective questionthat keep your creative muscles strong.
2. Organize for Freedom. Create reliable structures (clear processes, tidy workspaces, predictable rhythms) so your mind is free to take risks.
3. Alternate Modes. Design your calendar with intentional blocks for both focused execution and open exploration. Dont try to do both at once.
4. Audit Your Balance. Ask: Am I measuring only outputs? Where am I creating space for ideas, not just tasks?
The future of leadership isnt choosing between productivity and creativity. Its mastering both. When you create the structures that support your craft and the rituals that spark your imagination, you dont just get things done, you create things worth doing.
The leaders who thrive will be those who can deliver results and inspire, who can hit deadlines and spark breakthroughs. In a world overflowing with efficiency, its the capacity to generate meaning and originality that sets you apart. Productivity makes you reliable; creativity makes you unforgettable. The challenge and the opportunity lie in embracing both with equal intention.
Weve had branded entertainment since Procter & Gamble invented soap operas back in the 1930s. But today, brands are forced to diversify the ways in which they gain and hold our attention. Its no longer as viable or effective to depend on traditional paid media tools.
Innovative marketers are increasingly investing in content and experiences that attract and engage audiences rather than interrupt and annoy them. And the shift is driving results. Brands of all stripes talk about brand entertainment, but its the exceptions that truly create actual entertainment.
Ive spent a lot of time this past year writing and talking on the Brand New World podcast about the variety of ways different brands are doing this right. From WhatsApp working with Modern Arts on a Netflix doc about the Mercedes F1 team, to Dicks Sporting Goods formally establishing an internal entertainment studio that has already won Sports Emmys for We Could Be King in 2015 and The Turnaround in 2024, to the unprecedented deal struck between AB InBev and Netflix. The latter, signed in November, puts the global brewer’s major beer brands front and center in Netflixs push into live sports, as well as giving it early access to placement and integration in Netflix shows and movies.
Obviously brands want the shine of legitimate Hollywood entertainment. But production costs and other financial pressures have made working with brands a much more attractive prospect for Hollywood too. So I wanted to check back in with the executives behind some of these projects to find out what they anticipate the biggest developments will be in 2026.
The most significant drivers of these developments stem from the evolving platforms, fueled by audience preferences and behavior, as well as the economic realities driving brands and Hollywood into each others arms more often and in more varied ways.
Marketersand audiences, for that matterare going to see some big changes coming to screens, both big and small. Read on for what to expect.
Shifting platforms
Meta announced on December 16 that it would begin testing its Instagram for TV app in the U.S. on Amazon Fire TV streaming devices. Zac Ryder, cofounder and co-chief creative officer of Modern Arts, says this feature is going to be a game-changer for brand entertainment. Brands as varied as UPS, Bud Light, and Sephora have been building audiences on Instagram Reels and Stories, while other brands are jumping into the micro-drama trend of serialized, bite-size soap operas in vertical video.
Ryder says this shift means brand content on the platform will continue to look even more like entertainment, getting longer and more ambitious to better align with TV viewing behavior. Ultimately, this will further blur the lines between entertainment and social.
Ryder says that as a result we’ll start to see more big swings featuring A-list storytellers and talent this year. This will be especially true for brands who are already very invested in IG and have spent years building their followers. And of course, if brands are going to start dropping more ambitious work on IG, theyll drop it on YouTube as well, he says. In order to compete for brand dollars, streamers will need to become even better partners to brands, all of which will create even more energy in this space and raise the bar even higher.
A growing number of people are watching YouTube (and soon, Instagram Reels) on their TVs. Meanwhile, streamers like Netflix and Disney+ are increasingly utilizing brand partnerships to keep subscriber prices competitive. Many of my sources believe these changing dynamics of how we watch and engage with entertainment will drive where brands can find the best opportunities.
I suspect we’ll see more next-generation partnerships like those we’ve been involved with this past year, especially as the Warner Bros. thing sorts itself out, says Jae Goodman, cofounder and CEO of Superconnector Studios. I bet Skydance/Paramount, Disney, Amazon, Comcast/NBCU will all come to market with brands as true partners in surprising, innovative, mutually beneficial, and I bet very effective ways.
A new strategy
Goodman helped broker the Netflix-AB InBev deal and has also helped giants like Nike and LVMH set up their entertainment strategies. He says the long-standing trajectory of how brands and Hollywood do business has fundamentally changed.
Typically, its TV networks and streamers selling ad space to media agencies, then creative agencies filling the order. Film studios and distributors sell partnerships to brands, then licensing and promotional agencies get creative with the intellectual property.
Brands are now entering the market with real entertainment strategies, Goodman says. And brands are leading the conversation with entertainment entities by asking, What if we wanted to achieve XYZ and then figure out the structure and cost? We refer to it as idea flow before deal flow.
This past year, the Martin Agency worked with Subway Takes creator Kareem Rahma on UPS Business Trips. Martins chief brand officer, Elizabeth Paul, believes branded entertainment is growing up and moving from bloated bandwagons with hundreds of brand sponsors (see: Wicked) to fewer projects with a more focused audience.
UPS is a major brand that could easily jump on the blockbuster movie bandwagon or make a Super Bowl ad. Instead, “UPS Business Trips” was a relatively small, Subway Takes-inspired series in which Rahma and UPS drivers visit small-business customers. According to the agency, it had more than 100 million views across platforms, and generated 1,000% return on ad spend.
For those who truly believe in the space, brand entertainment will stop being treated as a campaign format and start being managed as a portfolio, says Paul, who suggests that the best brands will start thinking like studios, not marketing departments.
We’ve seen this most recently with Dick’s Sporting Goodss new in-house studio division, Cookie Jar & a Dream Studios. Dick’s CMO Emily Silver told me back in Septembr that this move will see the brand be more aggressive in the number of films and pieces of content it releases, as well as help the brand build more of a name for itself in the entertainment industry to attract different writers and projects.
“It gives us the opportunity to put a little more structure and framework around what content we want to produce and where we want to lean in to help build for the long term,” she said at the time.
New economics
The most significant factor in the pace of brand entertainment’s evolution is the business imperative from both sides to make the economics work. North American box office revenue for 2025 was more than 20% lower than pre-pandemic levels. And in the first half of 2025, major streamers ordered 24% fewer first-run and renewed scripted titles than the same period in 2024.
As production costs have skyrocketed, and the ability to get entertainment projects off the ground more difficult, Hollywoods typically cool condescension toward marketers has thawed to the point of giddy embrace. Cynically, even if Hollywood sees brands as logo-plastered ATMs, brands see an opportunity to exploit this need for cash to do cool things that are actual entertainment.
Last year, economic pressure forced marketers to be really choiceful with their media plans, which forced intentionality, says Paul. As brands got more selective, the most successful collaborations meant fewer swings with clearer creative intent. The result wasnt louder brand entertainment, but more considered workprojects that respected fandom, embraced specificity, and trusted audiences to meet brands halfway.
Paul cites the Martin Agency’s work on Bud Lights Armchair Quarterback last year, a Netflix partnership starring Peyton Manning that parodies the second season of the streamer’s show Quarterback. Armchair Quarterback attracted more than 100 million social impressions, thanks in no small part to tapping into the fandom of Quarterback by working with the show, its producersManning’s Omaha Productionsand Netflix.
However, she reiterates that this can’t be a simple exchange of relevance for cash. This is about forging true strategic partnerships that delight fans and move markets.
Talent magnet
The relationship between Hollywood and brands has evolved significantly over the past year. Brand partnerships and content are not embarrassing for studios or streamers anymore, in part because of the aforementioned economics, but also because the quality is higher and the value is clear.
WhatsApp’s film The Seat, for example, cost about as much as it would to make and buy ad time for a 60-second commercial. But it also was high enough quality to stand on its own on Netflix. This is a virtuous cycle: The better the quality, the higher caliber of talent is attracted to subsequent projects, which in turn should continue to boost the caliber of these projects.
Ryder says a growing number of A-list showrunners, writers, directors, and creators have been reaching out to learn more about the brand world in hopes of finding a project to work on together.
LVMH’s entertainment division, 22 Montaigne, for example, is developing projects with Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine, as well as Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment.
When we started making these kinds of brand projects 10 years ago, everyone on the talent side was so suspicious, Ryder says. Many believed brand entertainment was just a glorified long commercial. That has changed as more high-quality films have dropped. Its a bit like a Michelin chef trying a killer food truck and realizing that could be a new outlet for their cooking, he says. There are just a lot more delicious food trucks out there now.
From the moment Elon Musks artificial intelligence company, xAI, began rolling out its Grok chatbot to paid X subscribers in 2023, it pitched the tool as the bad boy of large language models. Grok would supposedly be authorized to say and do things that its politically correct competitorsprimarily ChatGPT, produced by Musks old nemeses at OpenAIwould not.
In an announcement on X, the company touted Groks rebellious streak and teased its willingness to answer spicy questions with a bit of wit. Although xAI warned that Grok was a very early beta product, it assured users that with their help, Grok would improve rapidly with each passing week.
At the time, xAI did not advertise that Grok would one day deliver nonconsensual pornography on an on-demand basis. But over the past few weeks, that is exactly what has happened, as X subscribers inundated the platform with requests to modify real images of women by removing their clothing, altering their bodies, spreading their legs, and so on. X users do not need to be premium subscribers to avail themselves of these services, which are accessible both on X and on Groks stand-alone app.
Some images generated with Groks assistance depict topless or otherwise suggestive images of girls between ages 11 and 13, according to a U.K.-based child safety watchdog. One analysis of 20,000 images generated by Grok between December 25 and January 1 found that the chatbot had complied with user requests to depict children with sexual fluids on their bodies. On New Years Eve, an AI firm that offers image alteration detection services estimated that Grok was churning out sexualized images at a rate of about one per minute.
Ive been sexually assaulted in the past, and it almost felt like a digital version of that, one woman told The Cut after Grok users transformed a picture of her posing next to a Christmas tree while wearing workout gear into a picture of her wearing a thong bikini. It is unfathomable to me that people are allowed to do this to women.
On Thursday, journalist and Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins reported seeing Grok-generated images of Renee Nicole Good, the unarmed 37-year-old woman shot and killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis, altered to depict her dead body in a bikini. As Higgins put it: Digital corpse desecration now available to the public.
For all the potential use cases of AI chatbots that AI companies have touted in recent years, bespoke pornography was always the howlingly obvious one. (You dont need to be a behavioral scientist to understand what certain demographics immediately think to do when presented with a tool advertised as capable of magically producing photorealistic images of anything ones mind can dream up.) With varying degrees of success, platforms like ChatGPT and Googles Gemini have at least tried to get ahead of this eventuality, building guardrails that try to limit users ability to customize NSFW images to suit their tastes.
A major difference between these companies and xAI, of course, is that xAI is helmed by Musk, whose ideological commitment to eradicating wokeness and censorship extends to offering amused, winking defenses of nonconsensual adult content published by his companys flagship product.
On his X account, Musk has been firing off prompts treating what would be an existential crisis for any other company as a fun and funny meme. The fact that one of the victims was Ashley St. Clair, the mother of Musks 1-year-old son, did not dissuade Musk from declaring himself unable to stop laughing at an AI image of a bikini-clad toaster.
Both X and Musk have since issued statements reminding users that the X terms of service bar the creation of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and pornography. X has also said that it removes CSAM and other illegal content, and permanently suspends accounts that create it. At the same time, it is sort of challenging for the company to position itself as taking a problem seriously when its owner, who is also the most-followed person on the platform, was logging on and treating the entire thing as one big joke.
Normally, the existence of an online tool capable of generating one-click CSAM would prompt widespread outrage and rapid responses from law enforcement. Regulators in countries in Europe, Asia, and South America have promised to investigate, and this week the European Commission extended an order that requires X to retain all Grok-related documents and data while officials take a closer look.
There are existing legal mechanisms in the U.S. for addressing the vile things Grok is doing, too. Less than a year ago, for example, Trump signed into law the TAKE IT DOWN Act, a bipartisan bill that requires websites to remove nonconsensual intimate imagery within 48 hours upon the victims request. And although a provision of federal law known as Section 230 generally protects websites and social media platforms from liability for content published by their users, here, Grok itself is doing the publishing by generating the images.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), who helped write Section 230 three decades ago, weighed in on Bluesky, arguing that AI chatbot outputs are not protected under Section 230, and that it is not a close call. Along with two other Democratic senators, Wyden has also asked Apple and Google to remove Grox and X from their app stores for violations of the companies terms of service. This would be a significant step beyond what appears to be the only action taken by Apple thus far: raising its age rating of the Grok app from 12+ to 13+.
All that said, Musk, who spent four whirlwind months hacking way at the administrative state as head of the Department of Government Efficiency, has plenty of practical reasons not to be worried. Thanks to the political and financial support that Musk and his Silicon Valley peers provide to the Republican Party, the second Trump administration has been enthusiastic about integrating AI productsboth from xAI and from other companiesinto the workings of the federal government.
The fact that Trump immediately designated David Sacks, a tech investor with significant AI and crypto interests (as well as close personal and professional ties to Musk), as his AI and crypto czar is a pretty good indication that meaningful regulation is not coming anytime soon.
Since 2019, states with both Democratic- and Republican-controlled legislatures have responded to the absence of federal action by passing more than 140 state laws regulating AI, according to a Brennan Center analysis. But in December 2025, the White House made what is perhaps its most promising gesture yet to the AI industry: an executive order reiterating Trumps commitment to a building minimally burdensome national policy framework for AI that will sustain and enhance the United States global AI dominance.
Among other things, the order directs executive agencies to identify state AI regulations that the administration deems inconsistent with its agenda, and encourages Attorney General Pam Bondi to form an AI Litigation Task Force to challenge the offending laws in court.
Like most Trump executive orders, this one will not have the immediate impact that some breathless headlines suggest; as the order itself acknowledges, Congress would need to act in order for the substantive provisions to take effect. But for Musk, the message the White House is sending about its priorities is what really matters: Right now, the Trump administration is too preoccupied with starting illegal wars and executing unarmed protesters in the streets to worry about a few risqué images appearing on its social media platform of choice.
When Musk left Washington last year, he did not do so quietly, lashing out at Trump for being insufficiently deferential to his preferences and insufficiently grateful for his support. But eight months later, the fact that the official response to Groks pornography and CSAM features is effectively a disinterested shrug demonstrates that the quarter-million dollars Musk donated to Trump and other Republicans in 2024 was a sound investment in his companys future.
By January 3, while Grok was still spitting out these images upon request, Musk and Trump had reconciled enough to have dinner together at Mar-a-Lago. Afterward, Trump called Musk great and a good guy, and Musk predicted that 2026 would be amazing.
Laws are only as strong as the willingness of the powers that be to enforce them. When you own the people who regulate you, there is no scandal too disgusting for you to laugh off.
Detective Mike McCaffrey laughs when I ask if they busted the door down. Maybe I’ve seen too many movies. Normally, he says, they would. But in this instance, it’s not the ticket scam perpetrator’s residence. It’s his mother’s. So, in this high-rise apartment building on 96th Street in Manhattan, he simply knocks. The mother answers, kindly, oblivious to why the NYPD is at her door on this Tuesday morning.
Inside, tucked in a small living room nook, is the man they’ve come forthe son, 28-year-old Nikhil Mahtanisurrounded by cellphones and laptops, tangled in charging cables.
Months earlier, the NFL had tipped off law enforcement about Craigslist ads selling tickets that buyers never received. McCaffrey, who works with the NYPD’s Financial Crimes Task Force, traced the ads back to Mahtani through IP addresses, phone numbers, email accountsa digital trail leading straight to his mother’s apartment.
From January 2019 to December 2022, Mahtani had run more than 1,000 ads selling nonexistent tickets to NFL games, NBA championships, and concerts, defrauding more than 100 buyers across the United States.
McCaffrey didn’t arrest Mahtani that day. But he seized his devices. Inside, he found enough to build an airtight case: screenshots of the ads Mahtani had posted over the years, bank records showing $120,000 of ticket-buyer money flowing through Venmo and Zelle, and even direct messages with victims. In one text exchange, a concerned buyer wrote: “I’m worried about being duped. Can you give me assurance that you’re a real person?”
Mahtani sent back proof in the form of a selfie and a photo of his driver’s license.
“In the investigative world,” McCaffrey says, “we call that a clue.”
Billions and billions lost to fraud
The sports ticketing industry is worth $65.5 billion globally. Meanwhile, Americans lost more than $12.5 billion to fraud of all types in 2024a 25% increase from the previous year, according to the Federal Trade Commissionwith ticket scams representing a growing slice of that total.
Ticket fraud isn’t limited to sportsit’s also hitting concerts and other live events, with social media platforms serving as the primary hunting ground. According to Better Business Bureau data, fraudulent websites represent the largest share at 38% of reported concert ticket scams, followed by Facebook (28%), Craigslist (9%), and Instagram (8%).
Teresa Murray, consumer watchdog director with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a national consumer advocacy organization, hints that the problem isn’t going away, saying, “It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”
The last great American counterfeiter
Before Mahtanibefore the social media scammers and the Craigslist con artiststhere was Eugene Smith.
Smith ran what federal prosecutors describe as a multistate counterfeiting operation, a sophisticated printing and distribution network spanning multiple cities, targeting the biggest events for the biggest payoffs. From 2016 to 2018, his network produced fake tickets to Super Bowl LI in Houston, Super Bowl LII in Minneapolis, NBA All-Star games, and NCAA championships.
Smith’s operation was simple: He purchased real tickets to major events, sent them to accomplices who replicated them using sophisticated printing equipment, then distributed the counterfeits through a network of sellerssome working street corners outside stadiums and in parking lots, others advertising online.
These weren’t crude photocopies. Smith’s counterfeits featured holograms, along with hidden images visible only under ultraviolet light, and thermochromic ink that disappeared with heat and returned when cooleda common security feature that allows gate staff to quickly verify authenticity.
“We had all of these covert and overt security features embedded into those tickets,” Michael Buchwald, vice president and legal counsel at the NFL, recalls. “To somebody with a trained eye, you could spot the difference. But to unsuspecting fanspeople who are really eager to get into an event and are not being carefulthey would fall prey.”
A 51-month federal sentence
According to prosecutors, Smith’s operation had printed scam tickets totaling at least $170,000 in face value, though the actual resale valueparticularly for Super Bowl ticketsfar exceeded the original prices. The FBI investigation that led to Smith remains partly sealed, but court records show the breakthrough came when one of Smith’s key accomplices, Eric Ferguson, was arrested and cooperated with investigators. Ferguson testified that Smith had recruited him to replicate tickets and provided the originals.
In May 2019, Smith was sentenced to 51 months in federal prison.
Smith’s conviction marked the end of an era. By 2020, the NFL had completed its transition to fully digital ticketing. No more hard stock. No more physical tickets with holograms and thermochromic ink. Everything moved to mobile-based systems with encrypted barcodes that refresh continuouslytechnology specifically designed to prevent copying and theft.
The impact was immediate. Physical counterfeiting at NFL games dropped dramatically, from large-scale operations producing hundreds of fakes per event to what Buchwald now describes as only “dozens” of scattered ticket-scam incidents.
“We’ve seen a very substantial reduction in instances of ticket counterfeiting,” Buchwald says. “I think that’s a big success in terms of digital ticketing.”
But digital tickets didn’t eliminate fraud. They just changed the face of itand in the process, blew the doors open for a new generation of scammers.
The evolving faces of fraud
Around the same time McCaffrey worked the Mahtani investigation, he assisted the FBI on another case involving international suspects using stolen credit card numbers to purchase legitimate tickets from venues, then reselling them through online portals at discounted rates. The tickets workedthey were legitimate. The real victims were the credit card holders who wouldn’t discover that their cards had been used until they checked their statements.
As tickets moved further toward digitization, other schemes began to emerge, each exploiting differen digital vulnerabilities. Fake websites mirroring Ticketmaster or StubHub, designed to rank high in Google search results when legitimate sites sold out and desperate fans searched for last-minute options. Hacked Facebook accounts where scammers posed as the account owner and sold nonexistent tickets to the victim’s friendspeople who trusted the source because they believed they were buying from someone they knew.
There has also been a rise in two-factor authentication scams, in which a criminal poses as a ticket seller and claims to need verification of the buyer’s identity for security. The scammer asks the buyer to message back a verification code being texted to their phonebut the criminal has secretly triggered a password reset on the buyer’s bank account or email, then uses the code to change the password and gain access.
These schemes have become so prevalent that the Better Business Bureau received more than 20,000 complaints about ticket purchases from January 2022 to early 2023.
Targeting Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour
Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour was especially brutal, according to Teresa Murray. In one case, she recalls, a mother and daughter planned an entire trip around seeing the showbooking flights from Oklahoma to Atlanta, reserving a hotel room, buying matching outfitsonly to arrive at the arena to find out their tickets didn’t actually exist. They stood alone outside the arena while the concert played inside, having spent thousands of dollars on a trip for an event they’d never see.
For Murray, that’s what made the Eras Tour ticket scams particularly devastatingnot the financial loss, but the fact that scammers were stealing once-in-a-lifetime experiences from families who had planned for months. “A mom just wants her teenage daughter to have this very special experience, and it’s taken away from them,” she says. “You had all these crying young women. . . . It was just next-level awful.”
The biggest challenge for law enforcement is scope. Smith’s operation was contained: one printing press, one distribution network, specific cities. But digital fraud is borderless and doesn’t specialize in specific events. It’s nearly universal. A scammer in Manhattan targets fans in Milwaukee. International rings use stolen credit cards in one country to buy tickets in another. And with peer-to-peer payment apps like Zelle and Venmo, once victims send moneyespecially through friends and family transfersrecovery is nearly impossible.
“Scammers are not exposing themselves to surveillance video footage or eyewitnesses,” McCaffrey says. “They’re able to steal a significant amount of money from behind their desk, from behind their keyboard.”
Even the platforms designed to protect buyers aren’t immune. While consumers are wary of ticket scams on Craigslist or fake websites, they can also fall victim to fraud through the official, verified platforms they’re supposed to trust most.
A $635,000 inside job
From June 2022 to July 2023, two employees at Sutherland Global Servicesa third-party contractor in Kingston, Jamaica, handling customer service for StubHubdiscovered and exploited a vulnerability in the platform’s system.
StubHub is one of the largest ticket resale marketplaces in the world. It operates as a secondary market where people sell tickets originally purchased from primary sellers like Ticketmaster. At the time, when someone bought a ticket on StubHub, the platform generated a unique URL and queued it to be emailed to the buyer.
Tyrone Rose, 20, and an accomplice discovered they could access the secure area of StubHub’s network where those unique URLs were createda backdoor into part of the system they weren’t authorized to use. They found a way to redirect the emails, sending ticket URLs not to the people who had just paid for them, but to accomplices in Queens, New York.
Shamara Simmons, 31, was one of those alleged Queens accomplices. According to prosecutors, she and her cohort would download the tickets from the hijacked URLs (the original buyers never received their tickets) and relist them on StubHub as new inventory at inflated prices. Because the tickets were intercepted during delivery and after the sale was complete, then relisted under different seller accounts, the system saw them as separate transactions, not duplicate sales.
[Source photos: Adobe Stock]
Pure profit
The scheme was pure profittickets stolen for free, then resold for hundreds or thousands of dollars each.
Rose and Simmons intercepted roughly 350 StubHub orders993 stolen tickets in all. Most were for Swift’s Eras Tour, though the operation also targeted tickets to Adele and Ed Sheeran concerts, NBA games, and the US Open Tennis Championships. Over the course of one year, they collected more than $635,000.
It’s unclear how StubHub became aware of the ticket scam. But once it did, its internal security team acted swiftly, reporting it to Sutherland Global Services, the Queens district attorney’s office, and Jamaican law enforcement. Rose and his accomplice were immediately terminated, and StubHub ended its contract with Sutherland entirely. StubHub then identified which tickets had been stolen and resold, then reached out to every buyer who’d been defrauded to notify them before their events.
Rose and Simmons were arrested in February 2025. Rose pleaded guilty in October and awaits sentencing. Simmons has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, each faces 3 to 15 years in prison.
How the industry is fighting back
Under StubHub’s FanProtect Guarantee, the company replaced or fully refunded the ticket price for every customer affected by the Rose-Simmons scam and in some cases provided additional compensation. But even with those refunds, many victims still shouldered the costs of flights, hotels, time off workexpenses that often exceeded the ticket price itself.
And no refund policy can restore what Murray says is the tru cost: the experience they missed out on. Fans had traveled across the country. They’d saved for months. They stood outside venues while concerts played insidevictims not of poor judgment or carelessness, but of a system they’d been told to trust.
Rob Tomlinson, StubHub’s head of trust and safety, says the company has vastly strengthened its internal security in the wake of Rose-Simmons, restricting access to ticket data to “an extremely small, very tightly controlled group of people” with full monitoring of who accesses what and when.
The company has also overhauled its ticket delivery system. The platform now primarily uses mobile transfers directly through original ticket providers like Ticketmaster and AXS, rather than generating its own URLs. Additionally, every ticket is now screened through proprietary in-house technology.
“We have a machine learning model and we have a bunch of rules-based systems as well,” Tomlinson says. “We’re taking in over 270 signals about the seller, about the ticket, the time to event, the event itselfall of these different signals to really try and build up a profile of what is going on with each ticket.”
An alarming compound annual growth rate
The global ticket fraud detection market, valued at $1.87 billion in 2024, is projected to reach $5.47 billion by 2033, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 16.2% as companies invest heavily in prevention technologies. But like the ticket sellers themselves, the NFL and other sports leagues are also playing defense on multiple fronts.
Buchwald describes partnerships with Homeland Security Investigations and Customs and Border Protection, ticket resolution desks at entry gates to troubleshoot issues in real time, and media campaigns around major events warning fans about fraud. For nearly a decade now, the league has maintained the NFL Ticket Networka system comprised of multiple ticket resale platforms, including SeatGeek and Sports Illustrated Tickets, that have an integration with Ticketmaster.
“All the tickets that are rendered through those systems result in fully verified barcodes,” Buchwald says. “It enables fans who purchase or sell tickets on any of those platforms to be sure they have a reliable, convenient, and safe way to get fully verified tickets.”
Ticket technology is also evolving. SafeTix, Ticketmaster’s encrypted barcode system, refreshes continuously to prevent screenshots and copying. Dynamic QR codes change every few seconds. These systems are effective, but they’re not a catchall. While major venues and leagues can afford these new technologies, smaller venues cannot. And as long as PDF tickets exist anywhereas they still do at many small venuesvulnerabilities remain.
“I think we’re still a fairly long way away in terms of the least-sophisticated venues getting on board with this,” Buchwald says. “It’s going to take a fair amount of time to fully adopt.”
How you can avoid being scammed
Beyond sophisticated technology, the industry is confronting a more basic problem: consumer behavior. After a 2024 Ticketmaster data breach reportedly exposed up to 560 million customer recordsone of the largest data breaches in ticketing industry historyplatforms intensified efforts to promote password hygiene and multifactor authentication. Still, according to Murray, many consumers ignore these safeguards and fail to adhere to even the most basic steps to protect themselves in a world where ticket scams are growing increasingly creative and deceptive.
“Desperate people sometimes make bad decisions,” Murray says. “They suspend their good judgment just long enough to become a victim of fraud.”
Murrays advice mirrors that of McCaffrey and other experts.
Never buy from individuals you don’t personally know (even then, do so with caution).
Never use peer-to-peer payment apps like Zelle or Venmothey offer no fraud protection.
Always use credit cards, which provide protection under the Fair Credit Billing Act.
Buy only from authorized resellers verified by organizations like the National Association of Ticket Brokers.
Never share verification codes with anyoneeven someone claiming to verify your identity.
Most important: Be willing to not go.
If all else fails, and you think youre taking a chance by buying tickets that youre not sure are legit, just dont buy them, Murray writes in her guide for consumers. If you decide to take a chance, you may spend far more time sorting out the fraud and trying to get your hundreds or thousands of dollars back than you would have spent at the [event].
Todays protection against tomorrows threats
Detective McCaffrey stands in a luxury suite at Madison Square Garden, where the Rangers hosted a playoff game the night before. He’s been given a tour as part of his Mahtani investigation. He looks out upon the ice, the Zamboni circling below. For a New York sports diehard, these are dream seatsthe kind that either wealthy fans or those splurging for a once-in-a-lifetime experience shell out thousands of dollars for.
Tickets that Mahtani sold more than 50 times, and never delivered.
McCaffrey buys Mets tickets on SeatGeek a couple of times a year. He knows the risks better than almost anyone and says he’s willing to bite the bullet in the name of security.
“I have no issue watching a baseball game from the middle to upper deck that saves me a couple bucks,” he says. “But I’ll make sure that I get [my ticket] from a reputable site. I’ll pay $6 in fees, but I walk off the 7 train knowing I’m gonna get into that game. Buying tickets from a third party, you don’t have that assurance.”
Systematic victimization
Mahtani was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $88,000 in restitution. At sentencing, the judge rejected Mahtani’s request for probation, calling it not a “crime of impulse” but “systematic victimization” of sports fans. Mahtani was released from federal custody in May 2025, having served the majority of his 15-month sentence with credit for time served and good behavior.
Eugene Smith was released in August 2022 after serving most of his 51-month sentence. Rose still awaits sentencing, facing up to 15 years in prison, while Simmons has pleaded not guilty. Her case remains pending.
But thousands of other fraudsters like them are still hard at work. Oer the past five years, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center has reported cumulative fraud losses exceeding $50.5 billion, with ticket fraud representing one of the fastest-growing categories. In a $65.5 billion global ticketing industry, the criminals are evolving faster than the defenses.
“The thing that keeps you up at night,” Tomlinson says, “is that you’re not sure what’s coming next.”
What you do? It starts with what you know.
Here are seven ways to learn faster and retain more.
1. Test yourself.
A classic study published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest shows self-testing is an extremely effective way to speed up the learning process.
Partly thats because of the additional context you create. Test yourself and answer incorrectly, and not only are you more likely to remember the right answer after you look it up, but youll also remember the fact you didn’t remember. (Especially if you tend to be hard on yourself.)
So, dont just rehearse your sales pitch. Test yourself on what comes after your intro. Test yourself by listing the four main points you want to make. Test your ability to remember cost savings figures, or price schedules, or how you will respond to the most common questions or types of customer resistance.
Not only will you gain confidence in how much you do know, but youll also more quickly learn the things you dont knowat least not yet.
2. Learn two or three things at (nearly) the same time.
The process is called interleaving: studying related concepts or skills in parallel. Instead of focusing on one subject, one task, or one skill during a learning session, purposely learn or practice several subjects or skills in succession.
It turns out interleaving is a much more effective way to train your brain and train your motor skills. Why?
One theory proposed in a study published in Educational Psychology Review is that interleaving improves your brains ability to differentiate between concepts or skills. When you block practice one skill, you can drill down until muscle memory takes over and the skill becomes more or less automatic. When you interleave several skills, any one skill cant become mindless.
And thats a good thing, because youre instead constantly forced to adapt and adjust. Youre constantly forced to see, feel, and discriminate between different movements or different concepts.
And that helps you really learn what youre trying to learn, because it helps you gain understanding at a deeper level.
Speaking of adapting . . .
3. Change the way you study or practice.
Repeating anything over and over again in the hopes you will master that task will not only keep you from improving as quickly as you could; in some cases, it may actually decrease your skill as well.
According to research published by Johns Hopkins Medicine, practicing a slightly modified version of a task you want to master helps you actually learn more and faster than if you just keep practicing the exact same thing multiple times in a row. The most likely cause is reconsolidation, a process where existing memories are recalled and modified with new knowledge.
Say you want to master an investor pitch. Do this:
1. Rehearse the basic skill. Run through your pitch a couple of times under the same conditions youll eventually face when you do it live. Naturally, the second time through will be better than the first; thats how practice works. But then, instead of going through it a third time . . .
2. Wait. Give yourself at least six hours so your memory can consolidate. (Meaning that you may need to wait until tomorrow before you practice again, which, as youll see in a moment, is a great approach.)
3. Practice again, but this time:
Go a little faster. Speak a littlejust a littlefaster than you normally do. Run through your slides slightly faster. Increasing your speed means youll make more mistakes, but thats okayin the process, youll modify old knowledge with new knowledge, and lay the groundwork for improvement. Or . . .
Go a little slower. The same thing will happen. (Plus, you can experiment with new techniquesincluding the use of silence for effectthat arent apparent when you present at your normal speed.) Or . . .
Break your presentation into smaller chunks. Almost every task includes a series of discrete steps. Thats definitely true for presentations. Pick one section of your pitch. Deconstruct it. Master it. Then put the whole presentation back together. Or . . .
Change the conditions. Use a different projector. Or a different remote. Or a lavaliere instead of a headset mic. Switch up the conditions slightly; not only will that help you modify an existing memory, but it will also make you better prepared for the unexpected.
4. And keep modifying the conditions. You can extend the process to almost anything. While its clearly effective for learning motor skills, the process can also be applied to learning almost anything.
4. Say it out loud.
Mentally rehearsing is good. Rehearsing out loud is better.
Research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition found that compared with reading or thinking silently (as if theres another way to think), the act of speech is a quite powerful mechanism for improving memory for selected information.
According to the researchers, Learning and memory benefit from active involvement. When we add an active measure or a production element to a word, that word becomes more distinct in long-term memory, and hence more memorable.
So dont just practice that investor pitch in your head. Rehearse out loud. That way youll remember what you thought, and also what you heard yourself say.
5. Learn in bursts.
Once youve drafted that pitch, run through it once. Then take a few minutes to make corrections and revisions.
Then step away for a few hours, or even for a day, before you repeat the process, because a study published in Psychological Science shows “distributed practice” is a much more effective way to learn. Why?
The study-phase retrieval theory says each time you attempt to retrieve something from memory and the retrieval is more successful, that memory becomes harder to forget. If you go over your pitch back-to-back-to-back, much of your presentation is still top of mindwhich means you dont have to retrieve it from memory.
Another theory regards contextual variability. When information gets encoded into memory, some of the context is also encoded. Thats why listening to an old song can cause you to remember where you were, what you were feeling, etc., when you first heard that song. The additional context creates useful cues for retrieving information.
Either way, distributed practice definitely works. So give yourself enough time to space out your learning sessions. Youll learn more efficiently and more effectively.
Especially if you . . .
6. Sleep on it.
According to a 2016 study published in Psychological Science, people who studied before bed, then slept, and then did a quick review the next morning not only spent less time studying, but they also increased their long-term retention by 50%.
Why? One factor is what psychologists call sleep-dependent memory consolidation. As the researchers write:
Converging evidence, from the molecular to the phenomenological, leaves little doubt that offline memory reprocessing during sleep is an important component of how our memories are formed and ultimately shaped.
Sleeping after learning is definitely a good strategy, but sleeping between two learning sessions is a better strategy.
Or in non-researcher-speak, sleeping on it not only helps your brain file away what youve learned, but it also makes that information easier to accessespecially if you chunk your learning sessions by studying a little the next morning.
7. Exercise.
Want to learn information faster? A study published in Scientific Reports found that moderate-intensity workoutskeeping your heart rate between 50% and 80% of maxdramatically improve recall and associative learning and increase your brains ability to absorb and retain information.
Want to learn or improve a task where motor skills are involved? According to a different study published in Scientific Reports, 15 minutes of cycling at 80% of max heart rate (intense exercise) resulted in better memory performance than 30 minutes of moderate exercise, which was better than no exercise at all.
In other words, exercising hard for 15 minutes fired up participants brains and allowed them to learn motor skills better and faster. To a lesser degree, so did 30 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise.
And then theres this. A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows exercise can increase the size of your hippocampus, even if youre in your 60s or 70s, helping to mitigate the impact of age-related memory loss.
Yep: Exercise helps make your brain healthier, toowhich helps you be smarter and stay smarter.
Jeff Haden
This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister publication, Inc.
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