The Week: Iran, Brexit, SpaceX, and the Business of Sports

George Hahn connects the dots across the week's biggest stories: whether the Iran ceasefire can hold, what Britain's political turmoil says ten years after Brexit, why SpaceX is already facing a reality check, and how the World Cup is reshaping the economics of media. We’d love your feedback as we build this show! Let us know what you think: [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Hogging seats on a crowded train, not saying excuse me, watching videos on your phone with no headphones in. Sometimes it feels like we don't know how to act anymore.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  What we have been seeing increasingly is people breaking rules. Why should I play by the rules if nobody else is going to do that for me?

• 0:21Speaker 00

  This week on Explain It To Me, how to mind your manners. New episodes Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:30Speaker 00

  SpaceX had a huge opening on the public stock exchange, but their story has changed a lot since opening day. Anthropic and OpenAI are lining up to IPO next. What does that mean for them? And more importantly, what does that mean for you? What's an IPO anyway? And should you be investing in them? I'm Vivian Tu, your rich BFF. And on this week's episode of Net Worth and Chill, we're getting into the weeds on IPOs, what they tell us and what we should and should not be doing with them. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on youtube.com/yourrichbff.

• 1:02George Hahn?

  Welcome to the week from Prop G Media, where we break down what mattered and what it all means. I'm George Hahn and it's Friday, June 26th. Today, another Iran deal that may already be falling apart. Why Britain can't seem to keep a prime minister. The biggest IPO in history gets a reality check. And finally, how the World Cup is rewriting the economics of media. Let's get into it.

• 1:36George Hahn?

  Last weekend, news broke of what appeared to be a ceasefire deal between Iran and the US. A memorandum of understanding, to be specific. On Monday's raging moderates, Jessica Tarlov tried to find a silver lining in this quote unquote "deal."

• 1:54Jessica Tarlov?

  I'm trying to be a little glass half full, at least for a few minutes, because I don't know. I'm just fundamentally a positive person and it's kind of exhausting just talking about like every way this has gone wrong. And I think that we're now...

• 2:10Jessica Tarlov?

  Fully in a place where we just have to ignore what President Trump is saying and doing, like that it has nothing to do with the reality on the ground. Iran was going to push the envelope and they did, you know, opening, closing the Strait of Hormuz, saying they'd left the talks when they were actually secretly still dealing. And if we did want to have like a little bit of rainbow news, I guess, or positive news, the Qataris and the Pakistanis issued a joint statement after yesterday's talks. That had some good stuff in it. I mean, if this is true, it could all fall apart tomorrow, of course, but they established this high level committee that agreed on a roadmap towards reaching a final deal, agreed to the creation of a de-confliction cell for Lebanon that will ensure the adherence to

• 2:54Jessica Tarlov?

  the termination of military operations. You know, technical talks still progressing, but the Iranians were part of that as well. So it wasn't just the Qataris and the Pakistanis. And if they're talking, that's better than bombing.

• 3:08George Hahn?

  Scott, however, came away with the opposite conclusion.

• 3:13Scott Galloway?

  So I think neither the IRGC or Hezbollah or Israel have gotten the memo on the memo. I think all of them see a vested interest in continuing to fight. I think Netanyahu is constantly on a war footing. And I go back to the same thing. I think the world would be a much better place once Netanyahu and Trump leave the world stage. But Netanyahu is on a war footing. He sees his political survival based on his promise to annihilate or destroy his enemies. He sees this as a unique opportunity. I don't think he has any intention of stopping. I think Trump will blame him and the IRGC will blame Israel as well for continuing to bomb Hezbollah such that they have an excuse or kind of a red herring to or a false flag

• 3:58Scott Galloway?

  to say the ceasefire has been violated. I don't think they have any intention of complying with half the conditions that Trump is trying to outline to save face and they will use.

• 4:12Scott Galloway?

  The ongoing conflict in Lebanon and Israeli strikes is an excuse that in fact the ceasefire that we quote unquote the West, Israel and America have not lived up to their promises. I don't think Bibi has any intention of stopping. I don't think the IRGC has any intention of stopping. And the notion that Trump thinks that the IRGC are good actors and have any desire to have a ceasefire with any real agreements with any teeth and that Netanyahu is not fighting for his political life. I just, Bibi didn't even see a copy of the memo supposedly.

• 4:46George Hahn?

  Whether you land closer to Jess or Scott's take, the stakes are hard to ignore. The conflict has already cost 13 American lives, roughly $132 billion by Moody's estimate, and pushed up energy prices that continue to ripple through the broader economy. This week also marked 10 years since Britain voted to leave the European Union. Since then, the UK has cycled through six prime ministers, struggled with weak growth, and watched public opinion turn sharply against Brexit. According to a poll by the ECFR, 2/3 of British voters

• 5:27George Hahn?

  across party lines believe Britain's decision to leave the EU had a negative impact on the country. On Monday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced his resignation. This week, Scott sat down with John Byrne Murdoch, chief data reporter at the Financial Times, and asked him, what went wrong in the UK?

• 5:48Speaker 05

  There's going to be so many answers to a question like this, but certainly two big ones that I would point to immediately are, one is the sort of planning and permitting system here, which has, which really makes countries like the US, where that's also a conversation, look like rookies. You know, the restrictions on house building in the UK are extraordinary. There are huge areas of land around London, around Manchester, around Birmingham, our major cities, where you are simply not allowed to build, called the green belt. We apply Similar restrictions or similarly severe restrictions to building infrastructure. We have some of the highest infrastructure costs in the world and the longest delays in the world affecting transport, affecting energy.

• 6:33Speaker 05

  That gives us some of the highest energy prices in the developed world. All of these make it harder for people, companies, you name it, to locate in the UK or in the most productive parts of the UK. The second factor, I would say, is an over-centralization of how things are done in the country. So one of the things I think the US does pretty well is state and local governments can raise their own taxes. That gives them strong incentives to build, to innovate, to try and run things better than the neighboring states. In the UK, we by and large don't have that. Overwhelmingly, things even at the local level are effectively run by the central government. That discourages one city to try to do things differently from another.

• 7:17Speaker 05

  Most of the tax-raising mechanisms, again, happen in a similar way. So local governments in the UK are similarly not incentivized to build housing, to raise revenue in the way they are in the US. So I think permitting and centralization are probably the biggest two I would point to.

• 7:32George Hahn?

  And if you think this is just a British story, Ed Elson would disagree. Here's his take from Tuesday's Markets episode.

• 7:39Ed Elson?

  In the name of Britannia, the UK voted to leave. Sure, it would be complicated, but in the eyes of the voters, they were better off on their own. How wrong they turned out to be. Ten years on, almost 60% of Britain say they shouldn't have left the EU. Meanwhile, GDP per capita is as much as 8% lower than it would have been without Brexit, and business investment is as much as 18% lower. Now, why am I talking about all of this? Well, for one, I grew up in the UK, so I care about their issues. But more importantly, the same decision that ruined the UK economy, that destroyed

• 8:19Ed Elson?

  the nation's politics for possibly decades to come, that same dilemma is now playing out in America. More specifically, the dilemma of tariffs or no tariffs. And while the technical details are different from Brexit, the thrust of that policy is the same.

• 8:41George Hahn?

  We'll be right back after the break.

• 8:48Scott Galloway?

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• 9:33Scott Galloway?

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• 11:02Scott Galloway?

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• 11:47Scott Galloway?

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• 12:13George Hahn?

  Welcome back. Last year, the entire UK stock market raised about $2 billion. This year, three American companies, OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX, are set to raise $150 billion. And the most extreme of the three had a wild week. SpaceX went public as the biggest IPO in history, popped nearly 30% on day one, and then gave most of it back. Ed made a prediction two weeks ago. Half of it already came true.

• 12:50Ed Elson?

  Before SpaceX went public, I predicted that the stock would rise at least 25% on the first day of trading. That it did. The stock hit $176 on day one, up almost 30%, and then continued to rise the following week, hitting a high of nearly $220 per share. So, check. Part two of my prediction, however, was that over the next six months, the stock would get cut in half. Why? Because I believed and still believe that the valuation makes no sense, and also because billions of dollars' worth of lockups would soon expire, thus allowing early investors to sell their shares, thus putting downward pressure on the stock.

• 13:35Ed Elson?

  That hasn't happened yet. However, we are starting to see warning signs. The stock has already fallen as much as 30% in just a few days. It also shed $400 billion in market cap in a single day, which was the second-largest one-day wipeout in stock market history. And while it did recover some losses yesterday, it's still 22% off of its highs. Keep in mind, this is all happening before any of the lockups have even expired, which means that the stock has yet to go through the real test, which is when thousands of investors will choose whether to hold the stock at an unreasonable valuation or sell

• 14:16Ed Elson?

  it and then go buy themselves a house, or a boat, or perhaps even a plane. I know what my money's on.

• 14:24George Hahn?

  Speaking of concentrated value, there's one corner of the economy where the money isn't fleeing. It's pouring in, actually. The World Cup is here, and this week it was on full display in America's backyard. On this week's Prof G Plus Deep Dive, Scott spoke with Axios media correspondent Sarah Fisher about where attention currently lives.

• 14:47Speaker 07

  I cover the business of women's sports.

• 14:49George Hahn?

  Yep.

• 14:50Speaker 07

  And a lot of events around this. The valuation increase on women's soccer teams has been astronomical. And the reason being, a lot of investors understand now that the men's sports, that there's value there. And so if you want to get in now, you can't get in on the starting floor. But with the women's teams, you can, and the premium is outstanding. There's a reason why Bob Iger and Willow Bay invested in. Their local LA women's team, right? And not a men's sport. Because if you're somebody who's a money person, this is where your biggest return on investment is likely going to come. And we're seeing that play out too with the women's sports media rights. The National Women's Soccer League, having distribution deals with Scripps, with CBS, with Amazon, with ESPN. A few years ago, that would have never been possible.

• 15:33Speaker 07

  You take a look at the WNBA, their rights agreement alongside the NBA, values them at like tenfold what they used to be. So, yes, MLS, huge investment opportunity. But the NWSL, National Women's Soccer League, is where all the money's going right now.

• 15:49George Hahn?

  Sports may be one of the last businesses where audiences are getting bigger instead of smaller. But for Scott, this week's World Cup wasn't really about media rights or billion dollar valuations. He's been in a Team Scotland jersey all week. Here's why.

• 16:07Scott Galloway?

  I have almost no interest in sports. Quite frankly, I'm not really a big fan of football. But I've become a big fan. Why is that? Because my sons are into it. And the mistake I made as a young father was believing that my kids would come out of the womb interested in World War II documentaries and CrossFit. They're not. And being a dad means giving into, quite frankly, I don't want to say losing yourself, but giving into their interests. And that's not to say you can't maintain yours, but the reality is my kids just aren't into what I'm into.

• 16:49Scott Galloway?

  And being a dad and being a present dad means registering the blessing of them being into something, that's a blessing. I think the worst thing that can happen to your kids is that, quite frankly, they don't develop a passion or an interest in much of anything. And I do think that happens sometimes, like nothing just seems to excite them. So if you're fortunate enough to have kids that get into something, then you really want to lean into it as well. And from an early age, my kids... Even when we were living in the US, got just super into Premier League and European football and the World Cup. So I took my son to, and I realize this is a story of privilege, but anyways, there's my land acknowledgement.

• 17:34Scott Galloway?

  I went to Russia, went to Qatar, took my boys. I had no desire really to go to, that's true. I had desire to spend time with my boys. I didn't have desire to go to see the World Cup, if you will. I've got, I've come to love it. It's fantastic. But the reason I am going to put on a kilt tomorrow night and march is I'm going to get to do it with my son and I'm going to feel closer to him. And we're going to remember it the rest of our lives. If I didn't have kids, I wouldn't be marching with the Tartan army tomorrow. So the blessing is the following. The blessing is finding something your kids are interested in and acknowledging that they may not be what you're into.

• 18:17Scott Galloway?

  And then leaning into and pouring flame and gasoline on what they're into. Some of it is strange. I have found all of a sudden, I'm trying to get interested in Pokemon cards, which is not easy for me. The worst superhero films, Jesus Christ, The Seventh Circle of Hell, but I will go to them. This is a long-winded way of saying, as a dad, the bad news is it's not about you. The good news is it's not about you. And you're going to find over time, that is actually quite liberating and quite relaxing to find things, to make things important to you that are dictated by other people's interests.

• 18:58Scott Galloway?

  I've actually found that quite liberating in a weird way. Somewhat relaxing. Anyways, go Team Scotland.

• 19:10George Hahn?

  We'll be off next week with a long holiday weekend, but the following week, we will be back with a fresh edition of the week from Prof G Media, breaking down what mattered and what it all means. I'm George Hahn. Have a banging weekend and a great July 4th.