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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.
Category:
E-Commerce
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.
Category:
E-Commerce
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.”
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E-Commerce
2025 was a fairly humdrum year for Apple from a hardware perspective. While the companys softwareincluding the 26 versions of iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOSgot a major visual overhaul, Apples hardware lineup included just one brand new product: the iPhone Air. But that is set to change in 2026. This year, Apple is expected to release a number of brand-new hardware products, along with some updates to existing ones. And yes, AI will be a focus, too. Heres whatand whento expect from Apple in 2026. iPhone Fold The most anticipated device Apple is expected to release this year is a foldable iPhone. Colloquially known as the iPhone Fold, this device will be the first-ever dual-screen iPhone and will take the form of a book rather than a clamshell device. Rumors are running wild about the devices reported specs, but it is highly likely to feature an industry-first crease-free display, which measures around 7.5 inches when unfolded. Its front-facing folded display is expected to come in at around 5.5 inches. A foldable phone will be an entirely new product category for Apple, and the iPhone makers entry into this market is expected to help foldables go mainstream. Expect the iPhone Fold to debut in the fall. An affordable MacBook MacBooks are amazing laptopsbut theyre pricey. The least expensive MacBook that Apple currently sells is the $999 MacBook Air. But this year, that will change. Multiple reports suggest that Apple will release a low-cost, entry-level MacBook with a display size of around 13.6 inches. Whats unique about this MacBook is that it will reportedly be the first to be powered by an A-series chip. The A series is the chipset found in the companys iPhones. Current MacBooks are powered by the more advanced M-series chips. But the star feature of the new MacBook will be its price. Apple is reportedly aiming to position it to compete with low-cost laptops like Google Chromebooks. Theres no word yet on what that low cost price may be, but it will likely fall somewhere around the $700 range. An LLM Siri New hardware isnt the only thing Apple is expected to introduce this year. The company will also launch a new version of its much-maligned digital assistant, Siri. This new Siri will be powered by a large language model (LLM), similar to those that power OpenAIs ChatGPT and Googles Gemini. The new LLM Siri is expected to be released with iOS, iPadOS, and macOS 26.4 in the spring. Its also a feature that will reportedly power Apples other new 2026 hardware product The HomePad No, this isnt a new HomePod smart speaker. The so-called HomePad is rumored to combine a smart speaker with a touch display (think: HomePod + iPad) and is designed to be a control center for the home. The tabletop device will reportedly let you make FaceTime video calls and control all the smart devices in your home. It is also rumored to be powered by that new LLM Siri that’s mentioned above, which means it will likely be Apples first hardware device that is designed to function as a household AI assistant. As for when you can expect the HomePad, a late spring launch is a good guess, since iOS 26.4 is expected to ship then. A new Apple TV 4K Speaking of the home, Apple is expected to introduce another home-based product this year: an upgraded Apple TV 4K. Apple has not updated the digital media player since 2022, and its current specs, including its A15 Bionic chip, are showing their age. The new Apple TV 4K is expected to include a powerful A18 (or later) chipset that just may be capable of running console-quality games. But more importantly, that chip may also support the new LLM Siri, bringing an AI chatbot and Apple Intelligence to the Apple TV for the first time. The new Apple TV 4K will likely show up sometime this spring. The usual suspects Apple is also expected to upgrade several existing products in 2026. One is the low cost iPhone 17ethe successor to last years iPhone 16e, which is likely to debut in the spring. In the fall, Apple is expected to launch the iPhone 18 Pro series (alongside the new iPhone Fold). Those waiting for the entry-level iPhone 18, however, will need to wait until spring 2027, as Apple is rumored to be moving to a new Pro/entry-level staggered release starting this year. On the iPad front, Apple is likely to upgrade the iPad Air to the M5 chipset, while also releasing an upgraded version of the entry-level iPad and iPad Mini. Multiple Macs are also expected to get the M5 treatment, including the MacBook Air, the 16-inch MacBook Pro, and possibly the Mac Mini and iMac. Finally, Apple will probably release its second-generation of AirTag item trackers, which will feature increased range and precision.
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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. 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.
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