Welcome back to This Week in Stratechery!
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On that note, here were a few of our favorites this week.
- What Nokia Can Teach Us About the AI Era. Some of my favorite Stratechery articles are the ones that draw on tech history to grapple with the biggest questions facing companies today, and Tuesday’s Article, Paradigm Shifts and the Winner’s Curse, exemplifies the form. Nokia and Windows dominated the feature phone and PC paradigms; that made them singularly unprepared for the smartphone paradigm. That, by extension, is why you should be wary of Apple and Amazon extending their smartphone/cloud paradigm dominance to AI. Google, on the other hand, continues to adapt. — Andrew Sharp
- What the NFL Wants from ESPN. This week the NFL and ESPN announced a new partnership in which the NFL will take a 10% equity stake in ESPN in return for control of the NFL Network and other NFL assets, including the RedZone Network. Thursday’s Daily Update analyzes the logic of the NFL-ESPN partnership for both sides, and the appeal for Disney is straight-forward: 72 of the 100 top rated broadcasts last year were NFL games, and this partnership will deepen ESPN’s relationship with (by orders of magnitude) the most popular sports league in the United States (while also providing additional assets to offer on an ESPN streaming platform, and potentially reduce churn). What’s more interesting is the NFL’s calculus, which Ben explores in depth. In short: as linear TV erodes and potential rights bidders fall by the wayside, “the NFL does not want is to be stuck negotiating with anyone but tech companies.” — AS
- How Visa Conquered Debit Cards. The story of debit cards in the United States blends advances in technology, regulatory shifts, timely acquisitions, lots of lawsuits, and several failures to launch before American vendors and customers were finally ready to embrace a plastic replacement to paper checks. I loved learning about all of it in the latest video from Asianometry, Visa’s Debit Card Monopoly. Jon traces the history from the first debit card issued by City National Bank in 1971, to the lukewarm adoption of Visa’s “Entree” card later that decade, to an explosion of Visa “Check Cards” in the 1990s (because the word “debit” was deemed too similar to “debt”). All of it is fascinating context for today, as Visa controls 60-75% of all debit card transactions in the U.S. and stares down a challenge from the DOJ for allegedly anti-competitive contracts and pricing structures. You can watch the entire YouTube video here, and Stratechery subscribers can read a transcript and download the podcast here. — AS
Stratechery Articles and Updates
- Apple Earnings; Cook’s AI Comments; Apple’s AI Strategy, Redux— Apple appears committed to its original Apple Intelligence strategy.
- Paradigm Shifts and the Winner’s Curse — When paradigms change, previous winners have the hardest time adjusting; that is why AI might be a challenge for Apple and Amazon
- ESPN + NFL, NFL Strategy, Additional Disney Notes — The NFL is taking equity in ESPN. It’s a great deal for Disney, driven by the NFL’s long-term concern about tech dominance.
Dithering with Ben Thompson and Daring Fireball’s John Gruber
Asianometry with Jon Yu
Greatest of All Talk with Andrew Sharp and WaPo’s Ben Golliver
- Summer Top Fives: Fruits and Follow-Ups on Gilbert, Magic and More
- Summer Top Fives: Guilty Pleasure Players, A Jokic Journey, and News on Fox and Luka
Sharp Tech with Andrew Sharp and Ben Thompson
This week’s Sharp Tech video is on whether startups can compete with Big Tech salaries.