Business Stories That Caught Our Attention in 2024

In this podcast, Motley Fool hosts Ricky Mulvey and Mary Long and analyst Asit Sharma take a look at some stories that caught their attention during 2024.

They discuss:

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• The rise of concert ticket prices.
• Why companies trying to solve the loneliness epidemic are in a difficult business.
• The implications of widespread sports gambling.

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. To get started investing, check out our beginner's guide to investing in stocks. A full transcript follows the video.

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This video was recorded on Dec. 24, 2024.

Ricky Mulvey: Let's go a little bit outside of market news. It's almost Christmas. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. Asit, Mary, it's Christmas Eve. We're going to do some lighter topics. We're not just doing market news today. I thought we could do some business adjacent stories that have just caught our attention this year, ones we've been thinking about and have a little bit of a looser Motley Fool Money than we normally do. I set this, so I go last if we get to it at all. But I'm going to go with the analyst who thinks more about money and finance and stocks. I'm going to go with Asit. Asit what is your business adjacent story that you've been thinking about this year?

Asit Sharma: Well Ricky the three of us love music so much, and sometimes we need to get on and tape a show. We're still talking about bands and concerts. I was thinking about this leading up to this one of our last episodes of the year, I've been wondering about the price of tickets for concerts back of the napkin math here, but the average ticket price to see Taylor Swift this year works out to about 200 bucks. Now back in the '70s and '80s to go to a high demand concert, the price was much less like $10.

Now, we do have to adjust that for inflation. But even when you plug this through an inflation calculator, it looks like folks used to pay about $50 to go to a big name concert back in the day. My question to start out for the two of you is, why the heck do ticket prices cost, in some cases, quadruple what they did 30 or 40 years ago?

Mary Long: Before I dive into Answer, I'm going to kind of highlight the $200 point that you brought up for Taylor Swift, because my first reaction to that is, wait, it was way more. There was a whole new genre of media over the past two years dedicated to the wild amounts of money that people spend. Not just for ERs tour tickets, but for buying merchandise associated with the concert. All the money that people spent to travel, not just see the show but get to the cities where the show is playing, etc. My immediate reaction was, it has to have been more than that. But I went to the ERs Tour. I spent $120 on a ticket. Was lucky enough to get something at face value originally.

Actually, that $200 number might be more in line. Who's to say, I'm going to use this all to segue and to the fact that I think one of the reasons that ticket prices have skyrocketed so much is because of this social media valarity piece. You get to not only are you paying to go to the concert, but you're paying to be a part of something that, look around you, everybody is going to this. Then you get to part of the premium is the social status of saying, I was there too. To quote Taylor Swift, it was rare. I was there, and I get to relive that experience in perpetuity on social media. I think that's my big reason is it's not just about going to see the show and listening to this artist that you love anymore. Sure that's a piece of it but it's also about participating in what becomes something that seemingly takes over all of the culture for a given period of time.

Asit Sharma: You're saying future bragging rights are embedded in that ticket price?

Mary Long: Little bit.

Ricky Mulvey: Also there's definitely a social standing if you have a photo of you on Instagram at the ERs Tour, showing what a wonderful time you had, in part because it was so difficult to get tickets for that. There's so many people who wanted to go but weren't able to. I was trying to get tickets to go see Taylor Swift in Denver, and it was absolutely impossible. I was one of those people. Mary, was it was for Sam.

But anyway I think there's this line from Scott Galloway where he's made this point that it's never been more difficult to be a millionaire but it's never been easier to be a billionaire, and it has to do with the winner take all economy that we live in, especially in Internet culture. There are things that everybody suddenly knows about in ways that I don't think existed pre Internet. Think about how everyone knows who the Costco guys are right now. It's just these things happen all of a sudden become a focal point. Taylor Swift was doing stadium shows for years and years, probably an inappropriate comparison. But I think it's because even though the Internet was originally supposed to create more niche interests, what's ended up happening is you have that mono culture where everyone knows about a few certain artists. The biggest acts right now are absolutely impossible to get tickets to. You think of probably Zack Bryan, Taylor Swift, I put Olivia Rodrigo on that list when she was doing her arena tours. You're not getting tickets to that, and it's a social statement to be able to go.

But what we are starting to see, I think and this happened this year was a swing back, maybe where people were saying, enough with these excessive ticket prices, specifically with the black keys. The black keys were going to do an arena tour saying, We want to charge about 150 bucks for lower level arena seats. I'm a fan of the Black keys. I saw the only Boy Tour. I'm from Ohio. I like them, but I wasn't going to spend $150 to go see them thinking, this is a $50 ticket. I think something that happened this year, despite the focal point of Taylor Swift you are starting to see a swing back in terms of ticket prices.

Asit Sharma: I think you're onto something there that things are swinging back Ricky. I also though want to say there's a different experience today for younger people, because they do have maybe a persocial relationship with a star, and not an unhealthy way. I think there are so many young women who grew up with Taylor Swift. A bond forms, and you are willing to fork out more to have that experience in person with the artist who you feel you've lived your life experiences alongside things that you found in that music that were going on in your life. Make that bond ever stronger. I want to say for acts like the Black Keys, which they've been around for a while, maybe they don't have that close association. We're talking about everything here but the music in some ways. There was a simpler time when the music was much more the value point of buying that ticket. You could still love a band, but if it wasn't economically feasible for you, I think you could take that pass, and maybe that's what you're drawing here, one thread that's interesting to follow.

Ricky Mulvey: I think it's a great time to be a fan of concerts right now. This year, I saw the most impressive concert of my life. I went to Sphere and saw Dead in Company. My mind was blown by that. Anyone who's been there to see a live show is raving about it. That was a $200 ticket. But when I walked out of it, I was that was absolutely worth the money. In some ways it was living in the future for those few hours.

Mary Long: Well, some of my favorite concerts that I've ever been to have been in really small venues. One of the best concerts I went to this year was pretty unexpected. It was for an artist whose name is JD Clayton, and he had shown up on my Discover Weekly on Spotify. It was one of those moments where you hear the song for the first time and you stop in your tracks, and you're I like that. It made me go to his page, start listening to more of his music. I saw because Spotify told me, he's going to be in Denver, pretty shortly, and went to this awesome concert at a great local venue. Tickets were $20 including fees. I convinced a bunch of pals to come join me for this. They never heard of him before, and it was just a fantastic experience.

Part of what made that experience so awesome, but also has been the case with so many other live shows I've gone to at small venues I guess maybe it's a parasocial relationship that you develop with the artist. But for me, it's you can tell how amped they are to just be there. I don't know that you get that same feeling. I have not always gotten that same feeling at a stadium show. It's this intimacy between artist and audience that they're just stoked that they get to play, and there is anyone that's watching them at all. That brings out a lot of the magic of live music to me. I hesitated saying parasocial because I don't know that that feeling has ever left me more interested in the personal life or feeling I have a friendship with the artist, but it makes me, like, root for them in a way they're someone that I went to school with and that I'm cheering on from afar rather than someone that I'm pretending to know. That's a really lovely bond to have with an artist.

Asit Sharma: Mary how much did you pay for that ticket for that concert?

Mary Long: Less than $20, 20 bucks including fees.

Asit Sharma: I can totally sympathize with this, because there are some great venues around where I live. I live near a few college towns actually and that's like a starting price, 18 bucks, not just for a new band that might be coming together, but for a good act that you have followed for a while that comes through town. I would say there's a certain type of artists who never quite hits the stratosphere. They're super talented.

You love their music when they debut, and then you see them several years later still on a relatively small venue circuit, because we all know the economics of Spotify aren't in the favor of the artists, and so some of these artists still go around. I don't think they sell CDs as much anymore, but definitely the merch aspect is there. It's great to be able to come back a few years later and see an artist. Again for me that I associate with a certain time in my life. I have a very eclectic mix always going on. I find that several years pass and I was in a certain frame of mind in a theme, and I can relive that again. That's not quite even that related to that parasocial relationship, but it's meaningful. I just love small venues as well because they're so intimate. The acoustics are generally in some cases, terrible, but so much better than a stadium. In a great club, you get everything. You get atmosphere, you're packed cheek to jowl with other human beings who have also come for this experience. I tend to love those. Adjusted for inflation, those tickets are a much better deal than your average big venue ticket.

Ricky Mulvey: You like being packed cheek to jowl at a concert? I need a little bit of space.

Asit Sharma: Throughout 2024, how socially isolated I'm in an era of remote work. This has something to do with Mary's topic. We'll get to this.

Ricky Mulvey: I think a couple of things that stand out to me. One is that, Mary when I look at JD Clayton, I put him up on Spotify. He has one album out, so he's still kind of relatively new to the scene. But he's on playlists with folks like Gary Clark, big blues artists, big rock artists. Honestly, my point that you see this huge disconnect. Noah Con right now, the biggest folk act is going to easily sell 30,000 tickets in Denver. But if you're the fifth biggest folk act, if you're the tenth biggest folk act, you're not getting anywhere close to that.

Then to Asit's original question, something that I think is important compared to the time of the Eagles, now there's significantly less friction to buy tickets. It's also an e-commerce store. You don't have to call somewhere. You don't have to show up somewhere to get tickets. You can look, pick your seat, and then that's allowed not only just more buyers, more demand, but also you see it from Ticketmaster, the ability to completely figure out the market for what something's going to cost. A front row seat is now premium. We can make seats even in the balcony in the rafters of an arena premium if we see that it's selling out due to dynamic pricing. I think that's played into what you're talking about. Let's go to Mary's story. Mary what's your business adjacent story?

Mary Long: My Business adjacent story will come as no surprise to anyone who's ever heard me talk about my latest Rabbit Hole because this is it. I'm really fascinated by the loneliness epidemic, and I smile as I say that because I think that this is a really genuine problem. We just heard Asit, allude to it or mention it directly. Remote work has a lot of people starved in some ways for more in person human connection. I think it's kind of easy to write off. Again the loneliness epidemic, that's a funny phrase to say and hear and take fully seriously, but I do think it's a very genuine issue.

What's fascinating to me is how many businesses I'm seeing try to solve it. While I think the issue itself is very real, I'm cynical about a lot of the purported solutions especially those from tech companies. I'm talking in large part about dating and friendship apps here because increasingly dating apps are trying to tap into the platonic market, as well wild to refer to human relationships as a market. But here we go. But I'm also seeing I do a lot of work at a We work in Denver, and I see postings there all the time about, find your community. Let's build our community. Again I appreciate those efforts on one hand, but I also think that they're tapping into something that's that search for community seems so is so prevalent. It also is sad to me. I'm increasingly seeing and maybe it's just because I'm paying attention to it, social clubs that will offer memberships for like $200 a month.

There's a mountain collective that's prominent in Denver, but it's scattered throughout the West called Gravity House. They offer a number of things. There's a gym that you can have access to. There's a co working space, but part of their pitch is, it's harder and harder to find community these days. Here's a way to do it. Just pay us this price. Again I don't really know what to make of this because while I think it's fascinating that so many businesses are trying to address this problem, I don't know that the answer is actually best solved by a business plan. I think it's solved by something else. I was going to kick this to you guys, not only just for your thoughts, but I know both of you are interested in cultivating community and being engaged in a number of different ways. How do you find that out in the world?

Ricky Mulvey: I'll answer it and then Mary I want to get to your cynicism because I think that that's interesting. The best advice that I could give if you're in a new place struggling to make friends is try to set up a regular event that's centered around an activity. It could be a card game. It could be a biweekly dinner thing, and then you can build a reputation around being the person that's a hub of activity. Then from that you'll often find more people want to hang out with you because, A, you're offering something and B, you become a person that, is an active community member. I don't think you necessarily need a tech start-up for that. Find a game you like. But the thing that I think is interested is you're cynical about private enterprise being able to create this Mary. Why are you so cynical about it? I know you've checked out a lot of these businesses.

Asit Sharma: I don't think she's cynical. I hear some questioning there.

Ricky Mulvey: You said, I'm cynical. Asit what are you saying?

Asit Sharma: I don't think she meant. I think we're just to the right of being cynical here, but maybe we are there. Are you cynical Mary?

Mary Long: I think you're right I'm skeptical. Maybe that's the better word? I'm skeptical of a lot of these because I think while I think the Internet, in particular, has certainly been the basis for it can be a great way to make friends in certain capacities, I think paying an app or an organization to give you friends. I'm about to just describe Greek life and go on a totally different breath, but.

Ricky Mulvey: Wait until I tell you about country clubs.

Mary Long: I don't know that that is the answer to something that the US surgeon general has referred to as an epidemic. I think there are good things to be found there but to turn completely to tech companies to solve a problem that they in part created that's where the cynicism actually steps in. Does that answer your question Ricky?

Ricky Mulvey: A little bit.

Mary Long: A little bit.

Asit Sharma: I like the last part of your answer, or I should say, I like your answer. That last part really resonated with me because it's commerce and technology that have made it easy for us to be detached from one another. Many times I remember having to stop way back and ask directions for places. I'm actually still a person who tries to figure out the way because my brain will go mush otherwise. But it's now so easy. You don't have to have much human interaction. There's so many ways to avoid it. You can order in. You can use an app to get around.

You don't have to go to the ticket box office anymore to buy a ticket. Do we turn to the same place that's helping to create this problem in the first place? I think that's a great question Mary. For me I tried to do a few things. One is to be a little bit more the person that Ricky is describing because I tend to go down rabbit holes myself. I love nothing more than to shut myself off and explore rabbit hole. In fact we've got a little package of carrots in the fridge at the office for Mary when she's down these rabbit holes. We have to put a little bit of orange right at the edge, so when she looks up she sees it and comes back out. But I can sympathize with that.

Turning what has developed into a weakness for myself into a strength, trying to flip it around and say, Asit maybe you could be that guy again. I mean, there was a time in your life where you were a little bit of a hub try it out. I think that's great Ricky. I'm going to steal one of Mary's thoughts which is she's talked about volunteering. I think this is an amazing way to form some social connections. You get a lot out of volunteering. There was a time in my life I used to volunteer quite a bit because I had three kids in school. I was simultaneously coaching a chess club, helping coach intramural soccer team and a quiz bowl team. That was just amazingly beneficial for me. Now it meant that my social group was all middle schoolers. Still the mental and physical activity of it, that feeling of accomplishment this is warm fuzzy you get when you're serving others versus serving yourself. Then I think the biggest part of it is you're thrown into a group of like minded people who have a common cause, whatever you choose to volunteer with. That's just I wouldn't call it a slide. Maybe we've talked about slides before. I wouldn't call it a friendship slide, but it is a friendship funnel. If you want to just go a little bit further, it becomes increasingly easy to make friends and do things outside of that activity.

Ricky Mulvey: You can screen people out a little bit. I do a little bit of volunteering I don't do enough. But one thing I found from that too is there's almost something beneficial working from home and, you know, trying to maximize your time efficiently. When you're volunteering, it's the complete opposite of that. You might be bored, you might feel your time is being wasted, but you won't feel lonely. That's ultimately I think it's ultimately a good thing. Getting to the business side and this is where Mary cynicism is emerging. If you think about, like, broader trends, people are working from home. People are meeting fewer people. People want to meet people.

You would think those would be tremendous tailwinds for the dating app stocks, Match.com, Bumble. The only one that's been doing well over the past few years is grinder. I wonder Asit if you've looked at those stocks, if you've made sense of that for these businesses that should have tremendous tailwinds, yet maybe it's the pressure of I don't want to pay this company in order to meet people.

Asit Sharma: They're really hard to figure out, and I know they became very difficult to evaluate during the pandemic, post pandemic. But I think the loneliness factor creeps in the difficulty of getting yield out of these apps. Versus let's go back to a previous example. The yield you get out of using Google Maps when you hop into your car, instant you see the value proposition, you never question it. The yield on a dating app is hit and miss.

I was laughing thinking about the example of paying someone for a social connection, maybe two or 300 bucks a month because that was my reaction when dating apps first came out. I was that's never going to fly. Here maybe the cynicism is creeping in a bit for me as well. Maybe we see a future in which the platonic type apps actually gained some traction, and it becomes normal and commonplace for you to meet your best friends on a social app. I personally don't think it's going to happen that way. I personally think the pendulum, the way it's swinging in society this hunger especially in the United States, where we're more spread out physically to reengage with other folks is going to take some of the edge off of that market proposition if we can speak again in such cold blooded mercenary terms. But the dating apps, I think they're up against some really difficult dynamics. One is that the frustration level is very high on these apps.

As my great friend and colleague, Emily Flippen often points out, even as she has lobbied for us to recommend a few of these over the years, if you find your soul mate the first week or two of an app, you never need it again. What do you do there? That's actually I thought it was just a cutesy aside when I first heard it, but it turns out it does have something to do with the dynamics of retention for these businesses. I don't see that the technology aspect is going to help much with these. I wonder the long term trajectory of investing in some of these businesses if it really makes sense or if they're just cyclical businesses.

Ricky Mulvey: For the listener I put Austin on the spot with that one, and you just knocked it out of the park, man. Good job with that. Anything else before we go to the final story?

Asit Sharma: We are waiting we are so curious.

Mary Long: I can talk about this for forever, but I think we should change it up and go to Ricky.

Ricky Mulvey: Let's the final story. This has exploded this year. This has exploded over the past few years. But one of the things that I've been thinking a lot about is the rise of sports gambling and its effect on young men. In particular it feels a Pandora has definitely come out of the box, and I think in years from now, we're going to look back and consider a lot of the mistakes we've made, which is there was a huge push for sports betting legalization. I have a draft king's account. I'm good at gambling responsibly on it. I'm not betting more than a Chipotle entree I would say. But what I've seen is, even though I'm interacting with fewer people in my late 20s here, I'm seeing more people that I interact with Benton heavy on sports. I think this is one of those things that's going to be a big problem for a few reasons. One is it's a dopamine rush.

It's a huge dopamine rush that's just been released into the world, and it's available at any time for yo. Then secondarily, it's also for a lot of people. It's going to be an addiction that is tremendously easy to hide compared to something like drugs or gambling when you had to have an offshore account or go to a casino when there were more hurdles involved. I'm thinking how this changes conversations especially parents are going to be having with kids and also just what has been released into the world where we're going to be looking back on this a few years down the road, saying, Will we be saying what did we do releasing that?

Mary Long: Ricky as I was thinking on this before we started recording, one of the questions that kept coming up for me was there's a difference. There's a very clear difference, but I'm unsure of where to draw the line. There's a difference between small stakes, poker games or a fantasy football league, even if there's a little bit of money involved in that. Then the complete gamification of sports that you see with DraftKings, FanDuel fill in the blank. I'm there's a clear difference, but where is the line drawn between those two things? When does it become more dangerous as opposed to just a friendly exchange? To me the thing that sticks out is the facelessness of Draft Kings and FanDuel or whatever sports betting app you're using. Maybe this even hearkens back to my cynicism about the tech companies that have that have presented us with a problem in trying to solve it just it's one thing to play around with your friends, to make a social event out of something and to have some stakes involved. That's fun healthy versus to have a faceless company that doesn't know you and wants to profit off of your potential addiction. That's terrifying to me actually.

Ricky Mulvey: Michael Lewis has a picas series about this, and he's pointed out in interviews. If you're allowed to play on these apps, it's because the companies think you're a loser. Basically what happens for these companies is they send you a VIP host if you're betting a lot of money on there and you're losing a lot of money, but they completely limit you if you win. That's something in Nate Silver's book that he put out this year. He talks about where he started betting on NBA games, and he noticed that he was getting limited from being able to do that. I think part of it is, and I'll steal the Michael Lewis take, have people understand that they're playing a rigged game.

Asit Sharma: I love that. Victor Niederhoffer who's a famous speculator, who I sometimes refer to for inspiration, wrote a great book called The Education of a Speculators about 1997. He talks about the house always having an advantage, and Ricky I mentioned him earlier this year when you and I had a conversation to be able to overcome the house advantage is nearly impossible because they always find a way to change the game, to change the spread, to change the odds. It's a depressing enterprise long term for anyone who undertakes it. I should say though there's a benefit to sharpening your mind about risk, about payoffs, about trade offs, about how to manage capital, how to allocate it. That comes from these types of activities.

I myself don't gamble. I do think it's addictive but I've played lots of poker in my life, and what you said. I'm getting a site here, which I rarely do. From our actual outline Ricky called this guys playing cards together. There is something of a male bonding ritual and it's not exclusively male, but a bonding ritual from the time you're a kid and you play your first hands of pokers with your friends for penny stakes. I had a penny jar we used to bring to our poker games you merge up to maybe some chips that somebody buys and you assign a value to those or sometimes it's like dollar stakes. That socializing I think, is carried on by men's groups through decades. Those who are able to do this responsibly.

There's a lot to like about the activity when it's social, when you're together with other people. But I agree with Mary it becomes scary in the context that you're pointing it out Ricky this is the theme of what we've been talking about today. Technology makes it easy. Commerce makes it easy for you to do this. The psychology of the app makes it easy for you to do this. We should say the engineering of the app. That whole branch is scary to me, but I'm here today to endorse men and women getting together for some low stakes poker, and enjoying an evening together, just as they do lots of other card games across the globe.

Ricky Mulvey: I'll cosign that as well Asit. I think it's a good way to limit yourself, make sure you're not doing anything financially harmful. But if you're doing it with friends, it's a good way to learn how to play fairly with each other. I think something we lose in adulthood is we play fewer games with other people. Let's leave it there. We'll be back on the 27th. Appreciate all being here. If you stuck through the remainder of this episode, I'll also plug that if you find value in the show, if you like listening to Motley Fool Money, please leave a review in a rating on Apple Podcasts. It's the front porch for Motley Fool Money and leaving a review is a good way to invite other people in, especially if you found value in listening to the show over the past year. Asit Sharma. Mary Long. Thanks for being here. Appreciate it.

Mary Long: Thanks Ricky. Play more games 2025.

Ricky Mulvey: As always people on the program may have interests in stocks they talk about and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buyers sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool editorial standards, and when not approved by advertisers. The Motley Fool only picks products that it would personally recommend to friends like you. I'm Ricky Mulvey. Thanks for listening. We will be back on December 27.

Asit Sharma has positions in Costco Wholesale. Mary Long has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Ricky Mulvey has positions in Spotify Technology. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Chipotle Mexican Grill, Costco Wholesale, and Spotify Technology. The Motley Fool recommends Live Nation Entertainment and Match Group and recommends the following options: short December 2024 $54 puts on Chipotle Mexican Grill and short January 2025 $110 puts on Live Nation Entertainment. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.