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Would you want to be in a group chat with your favorite sports celebrities and athletes? You’ll have your chance this fall, thanks to a collaboration between WhatsApp and OffBall. OffBall, a year-old sports media startup that focuses on careful curation for its followers, announced on Friday that it was bringing back The Chat, which it had previously conducted with sports stars such as LeBron James. The franchise is designed to get users to participate in big group chats and discuss sports or anything else. High-profile personalitiessuch as professional athletes or othersalso take part, and everyone can text or message each other like any other group chat, or simply follow along with the discussion. With the success of previous iterations of The Chat, OffBall is going to hold additional Chats, featuring F1 driver Daniel Ricciardo, media personality Kylie Kelce (wife of former NFL player Jason Kelce, and future sister-in-law of Taylor Swift), and NBA players Tyrese Maxey and Tyrese Haliburton. The Chats will occur during live sporting events, allowing fans to engage and discuss whats happening, Offball said. The company describes it as a unique “second screen” experience. Heres the announced schedule for the future chats: October 19: F1 Austin Grand Prix with Daniel Ricciardo, Hunter Lawrence, and Jett Lawrence. November 12: NBA Los Angeles Lakers versus Oklahoma City Thunder with Tyrese Maxey and Tyrese Haliburton. November 23: NFL Indianapolis Colts versus Kansas City Chiefs with Kylie Kelce and Caleb Hearon. In an interview published earlier this year by Lia Haberman on her Substack newsletter ICYMI, OffBall cofounder Michaela Hammond said that The Chat was born of athletes love of social media, and fans love of group chatting around sports. The Chat is built on an existing product feature on WhatsApp called Communities,” Hammond said. “People already use it for larger community-based chats, like neighborhoods, parents at a school, and workplaces.
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E-Commerce
An American businessman whose firm invested in several European soccer clubs that struggled under its ownership has been indicted in New York on charges of financial wrongdoing in an alleged $500 million fraud scheme. Josh Wander was a co-founder of Miami-based 777 Partners that owned stakes in an Australian airline, plus soccer clubs Hertha Berlin in Germany, Genoa in Italy, Standard Liege in Belgium, and Vasco da Gama in Brazil. The 777 story became a cautionary tale in the global soccer trend of multi-club ownership investors taking stakes in several clubs in different countries. European soccer body UEFA has identified the trend as a threat to the integrity of games and the player trading industry worth more than $10 billion each year. As alleged, Wander used his investment firm, 777 Partners, to cheat private lenders and investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars by pledging assets that his firm did not own, falsifying bank statements and making other material misrepresentations about 777s financial condition, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement. The indictment charging Wander with wire fraud, securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit those crimes was unsealed Thursday in federal court in Manhattan. Most of the charges carry a maximum prison term of 20 years. Wanders lawyer, Jordan Estes, told The Associated Press on Friday that Wander looks forward to setting the record straight. This is a business dispute dressed up as a criminal case, Estes said in a written statement. Wander and 777 had failed last year in targeting their biggest capture in soccer, nine-time English champion Everton, amid increasing scrutiny of the business and a lawsuit in New York from a London-based investor. Reporting about 777s soccer interests, led by Norwegian soccer magazine Josimar, intensified even before Wander was elected to a board seat at the influential European Club Association, a network of hundreds of teams that shapes the Champions League and other competitions. Wanders firm had moved heavily into soccer in 2021, buying stakes in financially distressed clubs recovering from playing in empty stadiums during the COVID-19 pandemic. The former chief financial officer at 777, Damien Alfalla, is cooperating with the government, the FBI said, and made a guilty plea this week. The women and men of the SDNY and our law enforcement partners will continue to work tirelessly to protect our investors and our markets, Clayton said. Another 777 executive, Steven Pasko, also is targeted in a civil law court filing Thursday by the Securities and Exchange Commission. It wasn’t immediately clear who is representing Pasko.
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E-Commerce
The U.S. stock market seems to be steadying on Friday, as banks recover some of their sharp losses from the day before. The S&P 500 slipped 0.2% in midday trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 23 points, or 0.1%, as of 11:30 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.5% lower. All three indexes drifted between gains and losses through the morning, but the moves weren’t as jarring as the big hour-to-hour swings they had earlier in the week. Drops for Big Tech stocks weighed on the market, including a 0.5% dip for Nvidia. Theyre fighting criticism that their stock prices have soared too high because of the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology, even though their profits have also been growing quickly. Bank stocks stabilized after several reported stronger profits for the latest quarter than analysts expected, including Truist Financial, Fifth Third Bancorp, and Huntington Bancshares. That helped steady the group, a day after tumbling on worries about potentially bad loans hitting smaller and mid-sized banks. The two banks at the center of Thursdays action also rose Friday to trim some of their sharp losses. Zions Bancorp., which is charging off $50 million of loans where it found apparent misrepresentations and contractual defaults by the borrowers, added 2.8% following its 13.1% loss. Western Alliance Bancorp, which is suing a borrower due to allegations of fraud, rose 1.3% after its 10.8% fall on Thursday. Scrutiny is rising on the quality of loans that banks and other lenders have broadly made following last months Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing of First Brands Group, a supplier of aftermarket auto parts. One of the financial firms that could feel pain because of First Brands’ bankruptcy, Jefferies Financial Group, rose 5.1% Friday. It had lost roughly 30% of its value since mid-September. The question is whether the lenders problems are just a collection of one-offs or a signal of something larger threatening the industry. Uncertainty is high following a long stretch where many borrowers were able to keep running, even with the weight of higher interest rates. And with prices soaring to records for all kinds of investments, the appetite for risk may have gotten too high. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon addressed the issue on an earnings conference call with analysts earlier this week. When you see one cockroach, there are probably more, Dimon said. Everyone should be forewarned on this one. But banks make loan loss provisions and typically have plenty of capital to keep the cockroaches from causing structural damage, said Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management. Based on earnings and data so far, it looks like this isnt an infestation and that the potential canary in the coal mine is probably passed out and not dead. Trading has been shaky on Wall Street, with stocks regularly swinging between gains and losses, since President Donald Trump threatened to crank tariffs much higher on China at the end of last week. But Trump told Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures that such high tariffs are not sustainable, helping to ease some of the worries. He also said that he would meet with Chinas leader, Xi Jinping, at an upcoming conference in South Korea after earlier saying there seemed to be no reason for such a meeting. In the bond market, Treasury yields steadied following their sharp slides from Thursday, which came as investors rushed into investments seen as safer. The yield on the 10-year Treasury edged up to 4.00% from 3.99% late Thursday. Gold also pulled back from its latest record as more calm seeped through the market. The price for an ounce slipped 1.3% to fall back to $4,247.40, but it’s still up more than 60% for the year so far. Besides worries about tariffs, gold’s price has also surged on expectations for coming cuts to interest rates by the Federal Reserve and concerns about the massive amounts of debt that the U.S. and other governments worldwide are building. In stock markets abroad, indexes tumbled across much of Europe and Asia after Wall Street’s weakness from Thursday moved westward. Germanys DAX lost 1.7%, and Hong Kongs Hang Seng sank 2.5% for two of the worlds bigger moves. Stan Choe, AP business writer AP Writers Teresa Cerojano and Matt Ott contributed.
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E-Commerce
The U.S. has succeeded in blocking a global fee on shipping emissions as an international maritime meeting adjourned Friday without adopting regulations. The worlds largest maritime nations had been deliberating on adopting regulations to move the shipping industry away from fossil fuels to slash emissions. But U.S. President Donald Trump, Saudi Arabia, and other countries vowed to fight any global tax on shipping emissions. The U.S. had threatened to retaliate if nations support it. Trump urged countries to vote “No” at the International Maritime Organization headquarters in London, posting on his social media platform Truth Social on Thursday that the United States will not stand for this global green new scam tax on shipping. The IMO is the United Nations agency that regulates international shipping. Saudi Arabia called for a vote to adjourn the meeting for a year. More than half of the countries agreed. Now you have one year, you will continue to work on several aspects of these amendments, Arsenio Dominguez, secretary general of the International Maritime Organization, said in his closing remarks. You have one year to negotiate and talk and come to consensus. Ralph Regenvanu, minister for climate change for the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu, said the decision is unacceptable, given the urgency we face in light of accelerating climate change. If the green shipping regulations were adopted, it would have been the first time a global fee was imposed on planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. Most ships today run on heavy fuel oil that releases carbon dioxide and other pollutants as its burned. The delay leaves the shipping sector drifting in uncertainty. But this week has also shown that there is a clear desire to clean up the shipping industry, even in the face of U.S. bullying, said Alison Shaw, IMO Manager at Transport & Environment, a Brussels-based environmental nongovernmental organization. Shipping emissions have grown over the past decade to about 3% of the global total as trade has grown and vessels use immense amounts of fossil fuels to transport cargo over long distances. In April, IMO member states agreed on the contents of the regulatory framework, with the aim of adopting the Net-Zero Framework at this London meeting. Adopting the regulations was meant to demonstrate how effective multilateral cooperation can deliver real progress on global climate goals, said Emma Fenton, senior director for climate diplomacy at a U.K.-based climate change nonprofit, Opportunity Green. Delaying the process risks undermining the framework’s ambitions, they added. The regulations would set a marine fuel standard that decreases, over time, the amount of greenhouse gas emissions allowed from using shipping fuels. The regulations also would establish a pricing system that would impose fees for every ton of greenhouse gases emitted by ships above allowable limits, in what is effectively the first global tax on greenhouse gas emissions. The IMO, which regulates international shipping, set a target for the sector to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by about 2050, and has committed to ensuring that fuels with zero or near-zero emissions are used more widely. What matters now is that countries rise up and come back to the IMO with a louder and more confident yes vote that cannot be silenced, said Anas Rios, shipping policy officer for Seas At Risk. “The planet and the future of shipping does not have time to waste. ___ The Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find APs standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. Sibi Arasu and Jennifer McDermott, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
If theres any doubt whether people are willing to pay $900 for a premium credit card, just look at the latest quarterly results for American Express: The credit card issuer reported Friday that it beat third-quarter earnings estimates and raised its full-year outlook. Its been a month since American Express refreshed its Platinum line of credit cards, raising the annual fee by $200 to $895, and that change is already paying dividends. The company has seen strong demand for these cards and more than 500,000 people have requested the New York-based issuers new pocket mirror card. The initial customer demand and engagement exceeded our expectations, with new U.S. Platinum account acquisitions doubling compared to pre-refresh levels, Stephen J. Squeri, chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement. American Express reported that revenue rose 11% from a year ago to a record $18.4 billion in the third quarter, driven largely by a 9% increase in card member spending. Earnings per share came in at $4.14, higher than the consensus of analyst estimates. American Express Platinum cardholdersboth individuals and businessesaccount for about $530 billion in annual billings, according to the company, and the recent refresh has helped drive additional revenue. In the first three weeks since the card refresh, the company reported a 45% increase in new high-yield savings accounts from these members and record-high bookings on Amex travel. RACE FOR PREMIUM MARKET Squeri said the successful relaunch of Platinum cards reinforces our leadership in the premium space. Indeed, the race for the premium credit card market has heated up in recent years as issuers have raced to one-up each other with a wide variety of cardholder benefits. JPMorgan Chase bumped up the annual fee on its Sapphire Reserve card from $550 to $795 in June, promising even more perks at this higher rate, and American Express followed with its fee increase in September. Offering these types of perks comes at a cost: American Express has paid $13.6 billion in card member rewards year-to-date, a 12% increase from the same period in 2024. Thats more than double the amount of another expense: Salaries and employee benefits. But nabbing the premium market is clearly a priority for issuers, even if a majority of cardholders arent willing to fork over $800 to $900 for the privilege of using a credit card. Consumers who pay more than $500 in annual credit card fees spend nearly three times more each month than those with lower-fee cards, according to figures from J.D. Power. MARKET REACTION And thanks partly to the successful relaunch of its Platinum cards, American Express also announced Friday that it has raised its full-year guidance for both revenue growth and earnings. It now expects a 10% increase in revenue, up from 9% previously, and a $0.30 boost to earnings per share, to a total of $15.50. Stock market investors rewarded the better-than-expected earnings report: Shares of American Express surged more than 6% by mid-day Friday. The stock is up nearly 16% this year, and has outperformed the S&P 500.
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E-Commerce
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