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In the months after a 2018 Supreme Court decision opened the door for states to legalize sports betting within their borders, giddy lawmakers across the country couldnt move quickly enough. No one wanted to miss out on the billions of dollars in tax revenue that the high court had suddenly placed within their reachor, worse yet, to watch that easy money go to neighboring states whose leaders had the presence of mind to move first. Within a month of the decision, Delaware Gov. John Carney bet $10 on a Phillies gamethe first legal single-game sports bet outside of Nevada. Many states were more concerned with getting sportsbooks online in time for a big-ticket event (the Super Bowl, March Madness) than building an infrastructure to regulate the multibillion-dollar industrya dynamic that journalist Danny Funt details in his book Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling. Lawmakers in some states even passed laws authorizing sports gambling before the Supreme Court decided Murphy v. NCAA, so theyd be ready to jump after a favorable ruling. Eight years later, its clear that this gold rush has had (and I am being diplomatic here) some negative consequences. Sports media outlets have become hopelessly intertwined with gambling behemoths eager to turn more fans into paying customers. Athletes who do not perform to bettors satisfaction are often subjected to racist abuse, death threats, or some combination thereof. And gambling addiction has spiked, thanks to the proliferation of app-based mobile betting that allows users to get their fixes anytime, anywhere. A 2025 study found that internet searches for help with gambling addiction increased 23% between 2018 and June 2024, and that they surged more with the arrival of online sportsbooks than they did when brick-and-mortar casinos opened. Over the last few years, a series of high-profile scandals have demonstrated the extent to which legalization has warped the actual games on which people are betting all this money. In 2024, the NBA issued a lifetime ban to Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter for his part in a conspiracy in which he pulled himself early from games to ensure that under bets on his performance would hit. Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier was implicated in a similar scheme last year, as were two Cleveland Guardians pitchers who were charged with rigging ball-or-strike bets on specific pitches in exchange for cash bribes. Then, earlier this month, federal prosecutors named 39 players across 17 teams who were allegedly part of a point-shaving ring that fixed mens college basketball games during the 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons. According to the indictment, bettors offered players bribes in the low five figures to underperform in agreed-upon games, and then wagered heavily on outcomes they had good reason to believe would go their way. Leagues and sportsbooks typically frame corruption as rare and make examples of those who are involved in it. But the mere knowledge that scandals like this exist can throw the entire enterprise into doubt: If you are a gambler who is angry about a bad bet, its very easy to wonder if you were cheated by perpetrators who were just lucky enough not to get caught. A new bill in Tennessee, where residents wagered $1.3 billion on sports over a two-month period last year, is maybe the most significant effort yet to retreat from the status quo. Introduced by a pair of Democratic lawmakers, state Rep. John Ray Clemmons and state Sen. Jeff Yarbro, the proposal would ban state-licensed sportsbooks from taking bets from people who are on the campuses of public colleges and universities, as well as from people at venues where those schools teams are playing games. Sportsbooks use the geolocation capabilities of smartphones to determine app users eligibility, so logistically speaking, rejecting bets from phones that are located within newly designated restricted areas would not be especially complicated. Colleges and universities would also be required to block people from accessing online sportsbooks while connected to campus networks. A handful of states have previously imposed modest limits on betting on college sportsfor example, banning proposition bets on college athletes, or prohibiting wagering on in-state school teams. The scope of Clemmons and Yarbros proposal is broader: It would prevent people on campus from placing any type of sports bet, college or otherwise. The rationales for targeting restrictions at college students are straightforward: Gambling addiction has hit young people hard, and young men the hardest. A Pew Research Center study last year found that 31% of adults between ages 18 and 29 had bet on sports in the previous yearthe most of any age group. A 2023 survey commissioned by the NCAA found that more than a quarter of college-age adults had placed a bet online, and overall, 58% had bet in some form. In 2024, a Pennsylvania addiction therapist told 60 Minutes about a troubling new archetype of patient hed encountered in recent years: college students who gamble away their federal student loan money. Clemmons echoed many of these concerns in an email to me, explaining that he was motivated by rising addiction rates among young people, sportsbooks efforts to target young people with advertising, the ongoing harassment of student-athletes, and a desire to prevent students from losing their parents’ hard-earned money to sportsbooks. If you are a policymaker looking to enact more robust protections for those whom the data shows are most vulnerable, the people who are physically present on a college campus is a pretty good place to start. At the same time, the bills parameters demonstrate the challenges inherent in trying to provide oversight to an industry that has, to date, been allowed to set new land-speed record every year. Bettors have long demonstrated their willingness to move around in order to place bets. In his book, Funt writes that before New York authorized sports betting, New York City residents would simply walk across the George Washington Bridge until their phones registered their presence in New Jersey, where betting was legal. Given what we know about how addiction works and how prevalent it is, Im not sure that requiring college students to cross the street in order to place a wager is going to be, in the scheme of things, a significant deterrent. Its also worth contemplating all the people and behaviors to whom this law would not apply. It doesnt affect private schools, which means that while students at the University of Tennessee might be temporarily locked out of their FanDuel accounts, students at Vanderbilt might not even realize if and when a ban takes effect. It doesnt affect private property, which means that students who live off campus would be free to continue wagering from the comfort of their couches. It doesnt affect access to federally regulated prediction sites like Kalshi, which function as backdoor sportsbooks accessible to anyone 18 and older. Since Tennessee already prohibits anyone under 21 from betting with state-licensed sportsbooks, the people who would be barred from wagering under this law and who are not barred from wagering under existing law are, basically, fans at certain sporting events, and college juniors and seniors at public schools, if they happen to be on school property at that moment. By email, Clemmons noted the legislatures limited jurisdiction over nonpublic property, and he asserted that geo-targeting campuses and sports venues seems the most effective, legal way to accomplish our primary aims. In response to my question about the merits of, for example, raising the minimum betting age or barring college students from betting regardless of their physical location, Clemmons said that if they pass this law and determine that more action is necessary, they will certainly look to have those discussions. I dont mean to suggest that lawmakers considering responses like this one to the various crises before them are falling down on the job. When there is this much evidence over this many years that the post-Murphy free-for-all is ruining this many lives, I would prefer people in power do what they can to mitigate the harm rather than shrug their shoulders and do nothing. I’m simply saying that at this point, eight years after the Supreme Court empowered the gambling industry to begin swallowing sports whole, it is going to be really, really challenging for lawmakers, in Tennessee or anywhere else, to start putting the proverbial toothpaste back in the tube. This is largely the result of the states own choices: They could have proceeded more cautiously after Murphy, by more aggressively limiting the pools of eligible bettors, or imposing more onerous tobacco-style restrictions on sportsbook advertising, or simply deciding to wait a little while before putting virtual casinos in millions of pockets. But they wanted the money that would come with acting fast. Now, theyre paying the true price.
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E-Commerce
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Zillow economists use an economic model they call the Zillow Market Heat Index to gauge the competitiveness of housing markets across the country. This model looks at key indicatorsincluding home price changes, inventory levels, and days on marketto generate a score showing whether a market favors sellers or buyers. Higher scores point to hotter, seller-friendly metro housing markets. Lower scores signal cooler markets where buyers hold more negotiating power. According to Zillow: Score of 70 or higher = strong seller’s market Score from 55 to 69 = seller’s market Score from 45 to 54 = neutral market Score from 28 to 44 = buyer’s market Score of 27 or below = strong buyer’s market The Zillow model shows that, directionally speaking, U.S. homebuyers have been gaining power since the pandemic housing boom fizzled out in mid 2022. window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}); Does ResiClub agree with Zillows assessment? Directionally, I believe Zillow has correctly identified many regional housing markets where buyers have gained the most powerparticularly around the Gulfas well as markets where sellers have maintained (relatively speaking) somewhat of a grip, including large portions of the Northeast. Based on my personal housing analysis, I consider Southwest Florida to be the weakest/softest chunk of the U.S. housing market this year. Not too far behind are pockets of Texas and Coloradowhich have also seen a bigger build-up in resale inventory and unsold new-build spec inventory over the past three years. In my view, much of the Midwest is a little tighter than Zillows model suggests. Additionally, in my view, many West Coast markets are softer than Zillows analysis suggestsin particular the areas that have recently seen big jumps in active inventory for salewhile some areas in the Midwest are a little tighter than Zillow suggests. One more thought: The Zillow Market Heat Index should not be the only metric that housing stakeholders look at when assessing market temperature. At a minimum, Id also recommend looking at the speed of active inventory change, active inventory now versus the same month in 2019, year-over-year home price change, and seasonally adjusted month-over-month home price change. All of those metrics can be found in the ResiClub Terminal, down to the zip code level. Another thing to keep in mind: Today’s housing market is far softer than the overheated housing market during the pandemic housing boom. Below is Zillows assessment back in December 2021.
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E-Commerce
When Roc Nation and the NFL decided that Bad Bunny would be their Super Bowl headliner, the next step was for Apple, the shows sponsor, to set the strategy to hype the halftime show. Apple has spearheaded the Super Bowl halftime show since 2023, building a complex array of advertising, teasers, playlists, and other content across its many platforms for Rihanna (2023), Usher (2024), and Kendrick Lamar (2025). Since the start of this $50-million-per-year sponsorship deal, Apple has treated the halftime show like it might be one of its products, with all the marketing and advertising bells and whistles it has at its disposal for things like the iPhone and Apple Watch. And it seems to be working. Since 2022, Apple Music has grown its subscriber base from 88 million globally to about 108 million. It currently has about a 30% market share of music streaming subscribers in the U.S., compared with Spotify’s 36%. Globally, though, Apple’s market share drops to about 16%and this is where the Bad Bunny strategy comes in. The Puerto Rican superstar is one of the most-streamed artists on the planet. As soon as he was announced, Apple Music released custom playlists, interviews, and more to excite fans and educate curious potential new fans. By crafting and promoting the Super Bowl halftime show as a global product launch starring such an internationally popular artist, Apple is using its broader playbook to expand the footprint of its big game investment. Artist first After landing the halftime performer, the first thing Apples vice president of marketing, Tor Myhren, and his team do is sit down with the artist and ask a few questions: What is it that you want to get out of this? What do you want this to be? What’s the goal here? Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, aka Bad Bunny, is a global superstar and one of the most-streamed artist on the planet. His answer? This isn’t my halftime show. This is for everyone. We thought that was such an inclusive, optimistic approach, Myhren says. So we just wrote that on the wall and said, That’s the brief, so let’s just make sure it feels like this is for everyone. This is a celebration. The celebration theme is in sharp contrast to the reaction from right-wing media and social commentators, and even President Trump himself, since Bad Bunny was announced as the halftime act in late September. Last week, Trump was asked about him and fellow Super Bowl performers Green Day. Im anti-them, Trump said. I think its a terrible choice. All it does is sow hatred. Terrible. The reality of Bad Bunnys message is the exact opposite of hatred. In the halftime shows trailer, the artist is seen dancing happily with people of all shades, shapes, and sizes. Myhren says that this, in essence, is Bad Bunnys vibe. He wants it to be positive. He wants it to be filled with optimism.” And why shouldnt he? He is the fourth artist to do the show since Apple took over its sponsorship, and each year it has broken viewership records. Rihannas 2023 show had 121 million, Usher’s had 123.4 million, and Lamars performance last year hit 133.5 million viewers. Oliver Schusser, vice president of Apple Music, Sports, and Beats, says that the companys relationship with artists makes it ideal for the halftime show. Theyve been working with Bad Bunny since about 2016. Unlike previous sponsors, we have such a close relationship with the artists that in all four years, we were able to work really closely on how we want this to be announced, how we want it to be rolled out, and what the surprises are, Schusser says. And I think that puts us in a very unique position, unlike any other version of this event. The goal this year is to globally expand the show. Myhren says Apple is using some of the same tactics it employs to launch new products around the world to promote this show. When you think about the way we launch our physical productswhether its an outdoor billboard, a film ad, a small piece in your social feedthey have to be able to play everywhere, he says. They have to speak to everyone, which is why we don’t use a lot of dialogue. Music is a universal language, so we use that. That’s been really, really fun and challenging. Measuring success Apples halftime show sponsorship is a five-year deal with the NFL that was signed in September 2022. And just like any Super Bowl advertiser that wants you to remember its big game commercial, Apple wants to make sure we all know whos sponsoring the halftime show. Myhren says that the brand measures success in the most obvious waystotal viewership, social impressions, and earned media. Are we watching and are we talking about it? Three years and three record-breaking audiences later, and the answer is pretty clear. The brand produces a slick pregame press conference for each halftime artist to further entice music fans. Far beyond your typical press room table and mic, its more like a slick talk-show pop-up. The Apple Music platform is packed with a variety of playlists tailored to everyone from Bad Bunny stans to total n00bs. And all the video content, including the show itself, is available on Apple TV. We’ve figured out ways to just make sure we’re a part of that conversation, which is critical, Myhren says. By building up what’s happening on the platform, we want peoplewhether they’re Apple Music subscribers now or potential subscriberscoming to the platform and experiencing what we have tere, especially around these few weeks. Myhren knows the question on any marketers mind is: What are you getting out of this? It really sits at the center of the biggest viewership event in the U.S. every year by a long shot. There’s nothing else even close, he says. I think it’s really unique and absolutely worth every penny.
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E-Commerce
Though I long resisted the label, I have been a solopreneur ever since I started working as a freelance writer in 2010. As the owner, manager, and only employee, all decisions about my solo freelancing business are up to mewhich continues to feel simultaneously invigorating and terrifying. But not all daunting solopreneurship decisions are the same. While taking creative risks and pitching big names continue to cause some minor fingernail-chewing even after all these years, investing in my business is the leading cause of second-guessing (and third-guessing, fourth-guessing) my own abilities as an entrepreneur. Many other solopreneurs share my lack of confidence about investing in a solo business. Not only do solo entrepreneurs tend to suffer from a kind money dysmorphia telling them they are one bad month away from everything falling apart, but the kinds of investments you make for a solo business dont typically offer a clear return on investment. While a factory owner can typically draw a straight line from their investment in newer equipment and higher output, a solopreneur generally cant know for sure that the social media ad buys, the coaching, the annual subscription, or the virtual assistant moved the needle for their business. So how do you decide when and whether to invest your money into your solopreneurship when you cant predict the ROIor even necessarily observe it after the fact? Build a firewall between your business and personal finances Reinvesting in your business often tends to be scary because solopreneurs have irregular income. It feels like tempting fate to drop a significant amount of your big payout this month on an investment into your solo businessbecause, our paranoid monkey minds tell us, doing that practically guarantees your clients will dry up next month. And then you will have spent your grocery money on a new business laptop that could have waited six months. This is why part of making solopreneurship sustainable is creating a financial safety net. Specifically, solopreneurs must put a firewall between their business and personal budgets. Though it may take some time to get there, your goal is for your solo business to pay you a salary. Heres how that would work: While youre in feast-or-famine mode, open a business savings account, and transfer any excess cash into it during high-income months. Even if you don’t have “excess cash,” commit to putting something aside, even if it’s just five bucks. This will create a habit that helps you build up a cushion for lean months when you dont have many clients or you have to chase the ones you have for payment. Over time, this savings account will begin to grow large enough that you can start paying yourself a biweekly salary. Once you have reached that point, you can switch to having your payments deposited directly into the savings account rather than the checking account. By then, your biweekly salary payments can be automated, so you can feel confident that your personal budget and expenses are covered. By setting up your business finances this way, you will have a better sense of how your business is doing and what kind of business cash flow you have without getting it confused with your personal cash flow. Earmark some money for business development In Vegas, its a huge mistake to gamble with money you cant afford to lose. The same is true with risking an investment into your solo businessor any business, really. (For every Apple IPO, there are hundreds more pets.com failures.) If youre a risk averse solo business owner (like yours truly), it can feel safer to simply clench your teeth and try to grow without spending a dime. (Trust me, its painful, slow, and kind of boring). But my years of avoiding the risk of investing money in the wrong business opportunity ignored the second half of the advice. Taking a calculated risk on money I can afford to lose is well worth it. Which is why, after eight years of freelancing, I started setting aside 5% to 10% of my income to reinvest in my business. Having this money specifically earmarked for business expenses and investments helped me feel more confident about potential development opportunities that couldnt promise a specific ROI. If these opportunities didnt pan out, I could afford to lose the money. Even if consistently setting aside a percentage of your income isnt possible, you can find potential business investment money in lots of other places, such as your tax refund, a gift or inheritance, or an unexpected bonus from a client. Act slowly and carry a big notebook Even the most decisive solopreneur can get stuck in analysis paralysis when it comes to investing in their business. You may worry that youre missing out on incredible opportunities, but you may also worry that youre throwing money away. Its in this state of indecision that were most vulnerable to the kind of high-pressure sales pitches that were most likely to regret latersince those pitches often come couched in the language of absolute certainty, whether youre talking to the salesperson at the Apple store who is trying to get you to upgrade to a more expensive laptop, or the marketing expert who wants you to commit to 12 months of one-on-one coaching for tens of thousands of dollars. To help you identify investment opportunities that are more likely to benefit you and your small business, follow these steps: Commit to at least a 24-hour period before buying anything. This protects you from your own enthusiasm and gives you a chance to let your cooler head prevail. Write down what you hope the investment can do for your business. There are no guarantees that youll get these returns, but the act of writing down your hopes can help you see if they are realistic or pie-in-the-sky thinking. Its even better if you share your thoughts with a colleague in the same or a similar field. Create a premortem. In business, teams will sometimes conduct a premortem before starting a major project to identify the things that are most likely to go wrong. If youre looking to invest a significant amount of money ito your solo business, create a premortem beforehand to identify what could go wrong with your investment so you can shore up those potential problemsor abandon the investment if the issues seem inevitable. The few, the proud, the solopreneurs Working for yourself as a solo business owner is not for the faint of heart. Not only do you have to deal with all the problems that come with entrepreneurship, but you also have to make all the hard decisionsincluding when to invest money back into the enterprise. While investing in a solo business will never be a clear decision, there are several things you can do to make the process feel less terrifying. To start, creating a firewall between your business and personal finances will help make your business decisions feel less personal. From there, earmarking some money for business development can help you feel more comfortable investing, since the money will be cash you can afford to lose. Finally, youll feel more confident about the opportunities you choose to put money into if you commit to a waiting period before making any purchases, write down what you hope to get from the investment to check that your expectations are realistic, and conduct a premortem to identify likely problems.
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E-Commerce
Anyone wanting to get their TikTok fix in the United States recently had a rough time. The app went haywire, kicking off early on the morning of January 25, due to a power outage at a key data center that knocked out services nationwide. Users reported the app crashing, with videos getting stuck and refusing to play, upload, or even hit a single view. The apps vaunted For You page turned into a glitchy mess, looping stale old clips and throwing out thoroughly non-personalized recommendations, while some users struggled to log in or comment on and repost videos. People searching for the latest videos about ICE raids and murders in Minnesota were shown zero results. Ditto if they sought out information on Jeffrey Epstein through TikToks search bar. Something was up, users felt. The reason behind the issues is prosaic: A power outage, likely caused by weather, knocked the app offline for a while. With the horrible winter storm in the U.S. this weekend, it wouldnt surprise me if that was the cause of some of these data outages, says Jessica Maddox, an associate professor of media studies at the University of Georgia. TikTok clarified in a public statement that it faced outages. Since yesterday weve been working to restore our services following a power outage at a U.S. data center impacting TikTok and other apps we operate, the TikTok USDS Joint Venture, which was established this month to oversee the U.S. arm of TikTok following the deal to onshore ownership of U.S. user data, posted on X. Were working with our data center partner to stabilize our service. Were sorry for this disruption and hope to resolve it soon. The company declined to comment on the record about the issue. Fast Company understands the outage was at an Oracle data centerthe company that now oversees the apps data on U.S. users after the deal earlier this month to establish the joint venture. That joint venture, which has American firms owning around 45% of the newly formed company, was pushed through after political pressure from Donald Trump. Oracle declined to comment. So far, so simple. And yet, when faced with a malfunctioning feed, users didnt chalk it up to the snowstorm or inclement weather. They pinpointed the apps recent divestment to a U.S.-centered coalition of investorswhich has been seen as a way for Donald Trump to try and allow U.S. companies to muscle in on the first major social media success story outside the United Statesas evidence that something more malign was going on. I knew they were gonna nuke tiktok but I didnt think it would be this quick. jesus christ, posted one user. Another said that the apps inability to serve views to videos, including those criticizing ICE activity in Minnesota, was down to a tone shift brought about by new ownership rather than a run-of-the-mill outage issue. What was striking about this TikTok outage was that users didnt experience it as a technical failure at all, says Tom Divon, a digital culture researcher and TikTok expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Many were carrying the political event narrative around it. That fear isnt entirely unfounded, reckon the experts. The U.S. president has previously said that he distrusts traditional media, and even set up his own platform, Truth Social, in response to issues that he perceived with existing social media. I think the reason people are so upset and thinking this could be a large-scale suppression is because its not out of the realm of possibility, UGA’s Maddox says. We know for a fact that platforms do suppress certain topics from time to time. She points out that the political backdrop, coupled with the conspiratorial nature of trying to unpick the whims of social media algorithms, makes it easy to indulge in the idea that something more deliberate is going on with TikToks performance. Social media activity is often thought of as conspiracythinking that blocking certain accounts changes your algorithm, or that theres an invisible hand controlling what we do or do not see at any given time, Maddox says. Because people dont fully understand how social media works, theres a turn toward conspiratorial thinking. That conspiratorial thinking isnt entirely unfounded, Divon says. That reaction did not come out of nowhere. Because just months earlier, TikTok went dark for around 14 hours during the temporary ban scarean episode that already taught users that access to the platform could be switched off by political decision, he says. Theres also a sense of inevitability, says Catalina Goanta, associate professor in private law and technology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. The U.S. takeover of TikTok has been received with a lot of pragmatism by many of its users, who had already collectively anticipated that algorithmic changes were to be expected.” Goanta believes that users expect meddling in the algorithm, so they see it even if its not actually happenedyet, or ever. Theres another reason why people are worried: It could affect their livelihoods. Given the massive change in ownership of the platform in recent weeks, people are on edge about the impact it could have on them. TikToks own lobbying against its attempted ban by the Trump administration in recent years suggested that the app supports 4.7 million U.S. jobs and contributes $24 billion annually to the U.S. GDP. The notion that might go away, or be materially changed under a new owner, makes people panic. Trust has to be earned, not freely given, Maddox says. And the new TikTok joint venture has not yet given us a reason to trust them.
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E-Commerce