Anguilla .AI domain, Caitlin Clark’s WNBA salary, FCC bans noncompetes, Quentin Tarantino not making 'The Movie Critic', and Judd Apatow & Leslie Mann's new mansion - #27

Welcome to Episode 27 of the irl Media NEWS Podcast. I'm your host Chris Thompson, and today we discuss Anguilla cashes in with .AI domain name, Caitlin Clark’s WNBA salary is sexist compared to NBA rookie salaries, the FCC bans noncompetes, Quentin Tarantino isn’t making the 'The Movie Critic' anymore, and Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann buy a new mansion.

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Transcript

Welcome to Episode 27 of the irl Media NEWS Podcast. I'm your host Chris Thompson, and today we discuss Anguilla cashes in with .AI domain name, Caitlin Clark’s WNBA salary is sexist compared to NBA rookie salaries, the FCC bans noncompetes, Quentin Tarantino isn’t making the 'The Movie Critic' anymore, and Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann buy a new mansion.

​​All that and more in today's episode of the irl Media NEWS Podcast. Let’s get into it.

Business

You know those pesky noncompete agreements that you’re always asked to sign when you start a new job? You can kiss them goodbye.

The FCC voted on Tuesday April 23, 2024 to ban nearly all noncompetes, which typically prevent workers from joining competing businesses or launching ones of their own.

According to FCC Chair Lina Khan "We heard from employees who, because of noncompetes, were stuck in abusive workplaces. One person noted when an employer merged with an organization whose religious principles conflicted with their own, a noncompete kept the worker locked in place and unable to freely switch to a job that didn't conflict with their religious practices."

The FTC estimates about 30 million people are bound by noncompetes. It says the policy change could lead to increased wages totaling nearly $300 billion per year by encouraging people to swap jobs freely.

So next time an employer asks you to sign a noncompete agreement you can tell them what they can go do with it.

AI

It pays to be a small island in the Caribbean named Anguilla, who had the good fortune to be awarded the .ai internet domain name, which is helping it to rake in the moolah!

First a little primer on how internet domain names were created and handed out.

Back in 1988 the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN for short, began assigning two-letter domains for every country. For example, Mexico received .mx and Spain was given .es which I’m guessing stands for Espanol.

Anguilla received .ai, which wasn’t a big deal until the country decided to capitalize on their good domain fortune and began selling the .ai domain name in 1995 to residents of Anguilla, but registration opened to foreigners in 2011.

Last year Anguilla brought in $32 million dollars, which is more than 10 percent of its G.D.P., from companies registering the .ai domain name.

The .ai domain name typically costs $139 for the first year, then goes up to $179 to renew, but you can usually find a discounted deal and be able to pick up a .ai domain name for as low as $59 dollars for the first year.

This isn’t the first time there’s been a run on popular domain names. All you have to do is remember back a few years when the .tv internet domain name was popular. The tv domain name is the Internet country code top-level domain for Tuvalu

According to The Commonwealth, “Tuvalu is an island country in the west-central Pacific Ocean. It sits about halfway between Australia and Hawaii. Its neighbors include Kiribati, to the north, and Fiji, to the south. It is made up of a chain of 9 small coral islands.”

For a while the .io internet domain name was all the rage, but for the life of me I can’t figure out why anyone ever thought that was a cool name. The .io internet domain name belongs to Mauritius, which is a subtropical island country in the Indian Ocean, just over 1,130 kilometers east of Madagascar, off the south-eastern coast of Africa.

The .io internet domain name has become a generic domain that is popular in the tech world since IO or I/O means input/output in computer science. Again, I don’t get the appeal, but to each their own opinions.

Here’s an idea: for the next internet fad we should all create our own country, register a top-level internet domain name for that made up country, and begin selling our domain names for hundreds of dollars per domain to monetize the latest fad just like Anguilla has. What could possibly go wrong?

Entertainment

Turns out Quentin Tarantino might not be making the 'The Movie Critic' aftercall.

We wrote about this only a few weeks ago. I thought it was a sure thing, but that’s Hollywood for you.

Everything seemed to be lining up. You had Quentin Tarantino lined up to direct his tenth film before retiring, the movie had a California tax credit worth $20 million, Sony was in discussions to pick up the film for distribution, and best of all you had Brad Pitt rumored to be signing on the dotted line to star in the movie.

So what happened?

Well, Quentin Tarantino happened. The man has put so much pressure on himself to go out with a bang with his tenth film before his self imposed retirement, and I think the pressure just got to him. I don’t even know where he came up with his ten-movies-then-he’s-out philosophy, but it’s starting to ruin my movie going experience as he keeps bailing on what sounds like great movies.

Alas, 'The Movie Critic' wasn’t meant to be I guess. Now the search is on for a film worthy of being Quentin Tarantino’s last movie.

Sports

You don’t have to look much further to find the blatant sexism in professional sports then the contract Caitlin Clark just signed with the WNBA for $76,000, compared to a man entering his rookie year in the NBA where the league minimum salary for a first-year player for the 2024 season is $1.12 million dollars.

That’s sexism!

Yea, I know it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but it’s still just wrong.

Let’s get into the numbers.

For the 2023 season, the WNBA was projected to bring in between $180 million to $200 million dollars. For the same 2023 season the NBA was projected to bring in around $10.58 billion dollars.

So why the huge difference?

Advertising and viewership!

Here are a few examples of the differences.

1) Ticket prices per game: $94 for an NBA game vs. $47 for a WNBA game

2) Average TV Viewership: 12.4 million viewers for the 2022 NBA Finals vs. 412,000 viewers for the WNBA

3) Average Attendance At Games: 17,184 for NBA games vs. 5,679 for WNBA games

4) Average Team Value: The average NBA team is worth $2.86 billion dollars vs. the $66 million dollars an average WNBA team is worth.

Now let’s talk about advertising. In 2023, the NBA's sponsorship revenue totaled $1.66 billion dollars, while the WNBA brought in $200 million dollars in 2023.

So the numbers tell the story. The NBA’s viewership and advertising dollars are multiples of the WNBA’s, and the easy answer for why Caitlin Clark is only making 1/10th as a rookie in the NBA makes all comes down to how much each league makes.

If WNBA wants the players to make a comparable salary to NBA fans then they’re going to need to 10X their viewership and advertising revenue in order to even the playing field.

If you’ve ever watched Caitlin Clark play, you know anything is possible!

Real Estate

Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann just bought a $31.9 million mansion in Beverly Hills, California.

The home was built in 1955 and sits on one acre, and has five bedrooms, eight bathrooms and is approximately 9,300 square feet of living space.

Judd Apatow is a producer and director of many films including “Knocked Up,” “Superbad,” and “Trainwreck”, while his wife Leslie Mann is an actress who has starred in movies such as “This Is 40,” “George of the Jungle,” and the Apatow-directed “Knocked Up.”

That's it for our show today. We really appreciate you sticking around to the end. 

If you don’t want to miss an episode please consider subscribing and following us wherever you get your podcasts from, so we can continue to bring you the business behind the news. 

I’m your host Chris Thompson, and this has been an irl Media NEWS Podcast.