Acquired

Acquired is the number one show on Apple Podcasts across all categories. Holy.

When your worlds collide... The gents at Acquired have done it again (not a surprise) to bring you this gem of an episode on the Indian Premier League India. If you are interested in the business of sport, cricket, investing, strategy, storytelling.... you won't regret this 4 hours of your life.

Thanks to everyone who wrote in with corrections + extra tidbits on Rolex! Here's the full list we published to our email subscribers. If you want these each time we release an episode, sign up here: https://acquired.fm/email

Indian Premier League cricket is the most interesting story in sports today. They created an *incredibly* successful sports league from scratch. The teams are worth a collective $16 billion today, and it was only started in 2008! While the eye-watering valuations of US leagues like the NBA and NFL are still larger than the IPL... those leagues have had 100+ years to do it. With cricket growing as fast as it is, the question that David and I explore on Acquired is... in 10 or 20 years, will IPL be the biggest and most valuable sports league in the world? Here are a few playbook themes of how Indian Premier League India became so successful, so fast. 1) ?? IPL created the perfect entertainment product. They took this sleepy, polite, old British sport with matches that lasted five days, and they completely transformed it. Matches are now 3 hours. The game is about power hitting "sixes" (similar to home runs). There's Bollywood, fireworks, cheerleaders, and on-field dance performances. It's the best cricket players in the world, and they play every night in primetime for just two months. 2) ???? India's rising middle class (and rapid connectivity) In 2008, less than 2% of population owned a cell phone. Not a smartphone... a cell phone. Today, that number is insanely up to 60%. And that's 60% of 1.4 billion people! (Primarily because of Reliance Jio slashing the cost of data plans to near-zero). With rapid smartphone penetration and data plans, the whole country is suddenly connected and IPL became the perfect entertainment product for it. India's middle class had an explosion over the same time period. Today it is larger than the *entire* US population. In the 80s and 90s, people talked about India as an impoverished nation, and today they have 550 million people in the middle class alone (defined as ~$7k-$45k in annual income). GDP per capita is also growing at almost 10% per year. 3) ?? Incredibly well-balanced league design The IPL is a case study in how to observe the world around you, cherry pick what works the best, and then innovate on top of that. Early on, IPL realized the one big thing that makes the NFL so successful: competitive parity. On any given Sunday, anything can happen. When you have uncertainty about the outcome, fans tune in! So the IPL got to work on designing an incredible set of mechanics to keep the league as balanced as possible. Standard 3-year contracts for everyone. An auction for players at the start of each season. Tightly-managed salary cap rules. And it has absolutely worked: 7 of 10 teams have won championships and all 10 have at least been runner-up! Full episode here: https://lnkd.in/gyc7cbJV

Tomorrow.

It's crazy how few games of Indian Premier League cricket are played each season given their massive $$ media rights deal.

Special thanks to Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal from the Acquired podcast for hosting our #GTC25 keynote pregame broadcast. The show was packed with insightful conversations, a surprise guest appearance, and all the excitement building up to our CEO Jensen Huang's keynote. Watch the replay to hear luminary guests offer insights on our remarkable 30-year journey > https://nvda.ws/4bRIMP2 ?? credit: Katie Thompson and John Shearer

Special thanks to Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal from the Acquired podcast for hosting our #GTC25 keynote pregame broadcast. The show was packed with insightful conversations, a surprise guest appearance, and all the excitement building up to our CEO Jensen Huang's keynote. Watch the replay to hear luminary guests offer insights on our remarkable 30-year journey > https://nvda.ws/4bRIMP2 ?? credit: Katie Thompson and John Shearer

Fun behind-the-scenes of our ROLEX episode in Hodinkee. Thanks Tim Jeffreys! https://lnkd.in/gMjw5Gqr

Pat Gelsinger on Jensen's transformation of NVIDIA from just a graphics card company: "He got lucky with AI."