Raphael Stevens

The bank accidentally deposited £130 million ($176 million) across 75,000 transactions on Dec. 25.
The mistake happened when payments from 2,000 business accounts were processed twice, meaning some employees saw their wages double, while suppliers also got more than they were expecting.
The bank said the duplicate payments were caused by a scheduling issue that has now been rectified.

A sign hangs from a branch of Banco Santander in London, U.K., on Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2010.
Simon Dawson | Bloomberg via Getty Images

LONDON — Thousands of people received a surprise gift on Christmas Day this year when European bank Santander accidentally deposited £130 million ($176 million) across 75,000 transactions.
The mistake happened when payments from 2,000 business accounts in the U.K. were processed twice, meaning some employees saw their wages double, while suppliers also got more than they were expecting.

The bank said the duplicate payments were caused by a “scheduling issue” that has now been rectified.
It is now trying to recuperate the mistaken payments, many of which have gone into bank accounts operated by rival banks.
“We’re sorry that due to a technical issue, some payments from our corporate clients were incorrectly duplicated on the recipients’ accounts,” a Santander spokesperson told CNBC. 
“None of our clients were at any point left out of pocket as a result and we will be working hard with many banks across the UK to recover the duplicated transactions over the coming days.”
Reports suggest the incident may have dampened the spirits of some payroll staff on Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

“It ruined my holiday period because I thought I’d paid out hundreds of thousands in error — I thought I had done something wrong,” one payroll manager reportedly told the BBC. “I thought it was just me and that I was going to get in trouble at work.”
The payroll manager added that Santander hasn’t shared how businesses should explain the second payment to staff or provided any information about how it should be repaid, according to the report.
Santander said the process for recovering the funds is an industry process known as the “bank error recovery process.” It added that it has started to work with other banks in accordance with the process and that these banks will look to recover the accidental payments from their customer’s accounts.
It said it also has the ability to recover the funds directly from people’s accounts.

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

Former ESPN and NFL executive Steve Bornstein returned to the sports scene in 2021 to lead data company Genius Sports North America operations.
Bornstein, who helped launch the NFL’s RedZone channel, discusses the future of sports television in an end-of-the-year interview with CNBC’s Jabari Young.

Steve Bornstein, NFL Network president and CEO, attends the 23rd Annual Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame Awards at the Waldorf-Astoria on Monday, Oct. 28, 2013 in New York.
Evan Agostini | Invision | AP

You may not have heard of Steve Bornstein, but you’ve almost certainly seen the sports content he’s helped create over the last three decades.
Bornstein, who in 2021 returned to media to change the sports landscape yet again, recently spoke to CNBC’s Jabari Young about what we can expect from live sports in 2022 and about what he learned during his time at ESPN and the NFL.

First, some background on his successes. Bornstein joined ESPN in 1980 as a programming executive and eventually served as its president. During his tenure, the network launched SportsCenter, NFL Primetime, and channels such as ESPN2. He joined the National Football League in 2002 and was vital in launching the NFL’s in-house network, which he publicly fought to place within the cable ecosystem, and the RedZone channel.
In August, Bornstein, 69, joined London-based data and technology company Genius Sports as president of North America operations. Genius provides data to set betting lines to sports gambling services, such as DraftKings, FanDuel and Caesars. The firm offers data to create next-generation stats for on-screen graphics during sporting events. In 2021, it landed an exclusive data rights deal with the NFL valued at roughly $1 billion and acquired Second Spectrum, which uses cameras to collect data on players in real-time, for $200 million.
Companies are spending billions on sports league data rights and using the information to increase fan engagement. So Genius, which joined the New York Stock Exchange this year after a $1.5 billion merger, hired Bornstein to help it expand.
“I look at Genius Sports, and I see ESPN in 1981 or 1982,” said Bornstein. “Your destiny wasn’t clear at the point, but you were able to influence it.”
“What we’re doing at Genius and Second Spectrum is taking big data and artificial intelligence in sports and applying it to practical applications that make the consumption of games more compelling,” said Bornstein. “I think this is the next wave of how people consume content.”

New tech to keep viewers engaged

Earlier in December, before I requested this interview, I heard Bornstein speak at a Sports Business Journal conference in New York City. He was animated and insightful while discussing how sports leagues are more innovative than the TV networks that show the games.
It used to be the opposite, noted former CBS Sports President Neal Pilson, who recalled his unsuccessful attempt to convince former National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern to use digital technology in the early 1990s.
But in 1998, when Bornstein was in charge at ESPN, the network added the digital overlay that shows the first-down line to viewers. It’s the yellow line you see on the screen during NFL and college football games. Bornstein’s new firm has another idea that can keep viewers tuned in to the action.
Genius sent CNBC a video demonstrating CBS Sports’ “Romo Vision,” which uses technology provided by Genius to show an NFL play animated on the screen moments after the play occurs. It’s named after former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, now a CBS NFL analyst.
Romo Vision is designed, as the yellow first-down line was, to keep TV viewers engaged longer. To pull it off, and obtain the data feed, Genius installed cameras around Heinz Field, where the Pittsburgh Steelers play, for CBS’ broadcast on Dec. 5.
Bornstein and I talked about Romo Vision and, more broadly, about the sports media landscape today and how it’s changing.
Jabari Young, CNBC: Watching Romo Vision reminds me of a John Madden video game. I felt like I was watching a diagram of an actual play I would use when I played. I remember you said at the sports conference that this is the future and a way to keep viewers engaged. So, I’d like to start there. What is the networks’ problem when it comes to presenting games today?
Steve Bornstein: When you say networks, do you mean the traditional broadcasters?
Yes.
I look at it this way. This [Romo Vision] is essentially the next iteration of consumption of content, right? And we’re going from one to many broadcasting models, which is basically what cable and ESPN is — what broadcast is — we’re going to customize feeds. I don’t know if it’s going to be a one-to-one feed or one-to-many, but I think that’s essentially how it’s going to begin. We’re going to customize your video experience to stuff that you’re most interested in. For example, if you’re watching a game and you don’t know all the players, to put up graphics that identify all the people that are on the field is a very compelling experience, and people resonate well with that.
So, you think it’s the video customization — the ability to alter your feeds. That’s the future?
It’s also trying to take — we have all this data coming out of sports because sports, in particular, lends itself well to data, whether it’s baseball, basketball or football. There’s just a lot of information, and the funnel is almost so big that what we’re trying to do is figure out what data you’re interested in seeing. We did a little bit of that at ESPN with the [the yellow line]. Fox did a lot more of that when they did the “Fox Box” — basically a constant score and clock up on the screen. Those are innovations that made [NFL games] more engaging. We have the opportunity now to have all this data that’s being collected — how do we use it for an application that’s fun and engaging to the consumer? That’s what we’re doing and what you saw with CBS. We’re just scratching the surface.
What needs to happen over the next decade around sports consumption? 
We learned a fascinating thing when we launched the RedZone channel. Some of the conventional wisdom is that it was somehow going to negatively impact the games that you were playing on Sunday afternoons because consumers were going to end up watching the RedZone channel and not the games being televised on CBS and Fox. What we found was that it ended up rising all boats. Not only did the RedZone channel perform extraordinarily well and exceed expectations, but the Sunday carriers saw a boost in their ratings. We discovered the multiscreen experience. The next generation of sports consumers are going to be multiscreen individuals. That, to me, is where it’s all going. What we have to do at Genius is make those experiences enhanced.
I asked what needs to happen but, what will actually happen over the next decade?
Now that’s a fair question and a difficult one to answer (laughs). I think the gamification of content will continue. What that gamification is and how it looks is still being written. But that answers your other question about why I came to Genius Sports. I think they are at the cutting edge of figuring out what the fan wants in the gamification of sports content.
Does Meta, formerly Facebook, have a role in the way this will look? 
I’m sure it does, but my thinking is that it’s probably much further down the line. The reality of that is a lot more difficult to achieve than the concept of it. I look at the metaverse as an opportunity, and clearly, the people that are developing that are more in the esports space than traditional sports.

Genius Sports.
Genius Sports

Take me back to when you first started at ESPN. Is there a media fundamental you still utilize as you take a lead role with Genius Sports?
Yeah, and it’s pretty simple. The model at ESPN — and it took us a while to get there — was we wanted to serve fans everywhere. I think that’s still the most important element of ESPN’s success, that they put the fan first. We’re trying to do that here at Genius. What do they want? How do they want to manipulate this data to make it a more engaging, fulfilling, fun experience?
And the NFL Network? What did you discover at the NFL that you’re bringing to Genius? 
The NFL Network — you had this incredibly important content to the consumer. There is no sport people care about more in this country than American football. You had this incredible library at NFL Films and all this content they were producing every week. How could you stretch it out and make it a 12-month experience? So we invented content that didn’t exist before — whether it was the schedule release show or moving the draft into primetime — and it was all taking the stories that were already being told by the NFL and making it more accessible to people. So, the lesson I learned out of my experience at the NFL was: When you have all these compelling stories, what you need to do is to tell them. And then we created outlets [where] you can tell them, whether it’s the RedZone channel on Sunday afternoons or featuring NFL films in prime time on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings [with “Hard Knocks” on HBO and “Inside the NFL” on Paramount+]. All those things were basically compelling storytelling of content that people cared about. We brought that more to the people.

Steve Bornstein in the NFL TV studio the day before the launch, November, 2002. The National Football League is launching it’s own television program based in Los Angeles hosted by Rich Eisen.
Carlos Chavez | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images

How big of a role will sports betting play in this gamification?
It’s going to be a pillar, but look, gambling and sports betting has been going on for as long as there have been sports. So, I don’t see that increasing or decreasing in any foreseeable fashion. It’s nothing new, we’re just shining a light on it. We’re able to tax it now, and society can get a piece of it. But the profit motive hasn’t changed, and the desire for people to wager on it hasn’t changed. What has changed is we have recognized it, and hopefully, we can come up with smart ideas that make it more enjoyable.

Final thoughts on the sports leagues

Genius made two key moves in 2021 by landing deals with the National Basketball Association’s Africa operation and the Canadian Football League. The agreements allow Genius to further innovate and test gamification concepts and multiscreen experiences such as Romo Vision.
When it comes to future fan experience, the way people consume sports games on TV and how they’ll engage with leagues, tell me what comes to mind when I mention the sports properties. Let’s start with the NBA.
The stuff they are doing courtside is really interesting. They can put people in a [first-person] perspective that’s pretty unique. People typically don’t have an opportunity to experience that. I think that could be real.
And the WNBA?
The same. But what they’ve proven about the WNBA is that people care about it. That was very important — just because people play the game, it doesn’t mean [viewers] care about it. But they’ve developed the personalities, always had the talent, and now telling stories that people are engaged with. That’s what touches people, and it makes sports popular.
Major League Baseball? (MLB is still engaged in a lockout at publication time.)  
(Laughs) I have a lot of different thoughts that come to mind. Baseball is still an important element of American entertainment consumption, but they need to address a lot of issues of the game. And then make it a better experience.
The NFL?
It’s still the greatest entertainment in North America. It’s the platinum standard to what all other content is judged by. They do such a great job of putting the event on the field, and they’ll continue to improve that. What we can do is enhance that experience. I don’t think we fundamentally change it. We take a great product and allow people to enjoy it everywhere, not just the stadium or at home on your big TV.
What about Major League Soccer?
MLS is becoming more and more important to the fabric of American sports consumption, and the World Cup coming here in 2026 is going to rise all boats.

  Disclosure: CNBC parent Comcast and NBC Sports are investors in FanDuel.

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

Along with the property market, consumption is one of two areas economists are most concerned about in their China growth outlook.
Top leaders in Beijing warned at an economic planning meeting this month that growth faces “triple pressure” from shrinking demand, supply shocks and weakening expectations.
“How consumption recovers next year will have a very great impact on the economy,” Jianguang Shen, chief economist at Chinese e-commerce company JD.com said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC.

A Hangzhou location of the Element Fresh chain, which entered the bankruptcy liquidation process in December 2021, as the coronavirus pandemic took its toll.
Costfoto | Future Publishing | Getty Images

BEIJING — Sluggish consumer spending has dragged down China’s economy since the pandemic, with little relief in sight for 2022.
Along with the property market, consumption is one of two areas economists are most concerned about in their China growth outlook. Consumer spending is also the sector that businesses and investors have bet on as they expect China’s middle class spending power to grow in coming years.

Top leaders in Beijing warned at an economic planning meeting this month that growth faces “triple pressure” from shrinking demand, supply shocks and weakening expectations.
“The core problem of these ‘triple pressures’ is still a weakening of demand or insufficient demand,” Wang Jun, chief economist at Zhongyuan Bank, said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC. “If demand improves, then expectations will improve.”
The main reason why economic development cannot be sustained is reflected in the weakening of demand, he said, noting in particular the negative impact of the pandemic on people’s incomes. He also pointed to drags on demand from reduced local government spending on infrastructure projects and regulation on after-school tutoring businesses that have affected employment.

Regarding the third pressure of supply shocks, he said they are primarily related to the pandemic and overly drastic measures for reducing carbon emissions, which have since been adjusted. Virus-related restrictions on return-to-work have contributed to disruptions in global supply chains, including a shortage in critical components like semiconductors.
Overall uncertainty about jobs and incomes reduces people’s willingness to spend. Beijing’s crackdown on real estate developers’ reliance on debt also affects household perceptions of wealth, as the majority is tied up in property.

“How consumption recovers next year will have a very great impact on the economy,” Jianguang Shen, chief economist at Chinese e-commerce company JD.com said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC.
Shen said authorities could boost consumption by following Hong Kong’s example in offering vouchers. That would force consumer spending on specific businesses like hotels, incentivized further by a tiered structure that wouldn’t unlock subsequent vouchers until the first one expired or was used up.

Read more about China from CNBC Pro

Hong Kong’s retail sales had contracted in 2019 and 2020 as protests disrupted the local economy, even before the pandemic shut off the semi-autonomous region from foreign and mainland tourists. Local authorities launched the latest voucher program in August and retail sales for the year through October are up 8.45% from the same period in 2020.
Mainland China’s retail sales dropped last year despite the economy growing overall. Comparisons to that decline helped retail sales surge in the first quarter, but the pace of increase has slowed, especially since the summer. Retail sales for the first 11 months of the year still rose 13.7% from the same period in 2020.
By sector, consumers have picked up their spending more on food and clothing, rather than services such as education and entertainment, according to Goldman Sachs analysts’ estimates. They expect that divergence between goods and services to narrow slightly next year.
But even with their projections for 7% growth in real household consumption next year, it “would remain below its pre-Covid trend by the end of 2022,” the analysts said. They pointed to drags from China’s “zero tolerance” policy for controlling Covid and the downturn in the property sector.
The investment bank expects China’s GDP will slow to 4.8% growth next year, down from an expected 7.8% this year.

Real estate needs homebuyers

Troubles in China’s sprawling property market caught global investors’ attention this summer as indebted developers like Evergrande teetered on the edge of default, prompting contagion fears. Government efforts to rein in the industry’s high debt levels and surging home prices have resulted in tighter financing conditions for developers — and falling sales and prices.
Property poses “the biggest growth headwind in 2022,” Macquarie’s Chief China Economist Larry Hu said in his outlook report. He expects housing starts and floor space sold to fall at an even faster pace next year, and property investment to drop by 2%, after rising by an expected 4.8% this year.
“Property policy should shift from tightening to loosening sometime next year, as we expect policymakers to defend 5% GDP growth,” Hu said. “The risk is that they might react too late, given their reluctance in using property as the vehicle for stimulus.”
China’s top-level economic planning meeting this month did not signal much change in policy on real estate. Beijing maintained its position that “houses are for living in, not for speculation.”
It will likely take a few years to resolve the real estate industry’s problems, said Zhongyuan Bank’s Wang. In the meantime, he expects the central government will need to issue debt and spend more to help local governments weather the hit to their revenues.
Regional and local governments derive at least 20%, if not more, of their revenue from land sales to developers, according to Moody’s.
A challenge for policymakers is to reduce real estate-related debt levels while ensuring the property market doesn’t slow drastically.
“Weak market sentiment is also affecting residential home sales, as buyers postpone purchases in anticipation of further price reduction,” Fitch said in a report last week. The firm expects a 15% decline in home sales by value next year, which could cause five of 40 developers in its rating coverage to suffer a cash squeeze.
“We expect a reduction in real-estate construction activities to ripple through related sectors, such as steel, iron ore and coking coal, decelerate overall fixed-asset investments and even put a strain on financial institutions,” Fitch said.
For economic policy next year, Beijing has emphasized that stability is its priority. Authorities have also made it clear this year that quality of growth is increasingly more important than quantity.
Columbia University Earth Institute, China Center for International Economic Exchanges and Ali Research Institute have attempted to gauge such progress with a national sustainable development index. In addition to GDP, the index incorporates factors such as revenue of high tech businesses, and spending on education, social welfare and pollution treatment.
The index rose to 82.1 in 2019, from 59 in 2015, according to the latest release this month.

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention increased its travel warning for cruise ships to the highest level.
The CDC warned that the risk of catching Covid on cruise ships is very high regardless of vaccination status.
The agency is currently investigating or observing dozens of cruise ships that have had Covid outbreaks.
Cruise ships operating in U.S. waters reported about 5,000 Covid cases to the CDC between Dec. 15 – 29.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday advised people against going on cruises regardless of their vaccination status after a recent surge in positive Covid cases onboard ships as the highly contagious omicron variant sweeps the world.
The CDC increased its travel warning for cruises to the highest level as the agency is investigating or observing dozens of ships that have had Covid outbreaks.

Cruise ships operating in U.S. waters reported about 5,000 Covid cases to the CDC between Dec. 15 – 29, a major spike compared with the first two weeks of the month when 162 cases were reported.
“It is especially important that travelers who are at an increased risk of severe illness from COVID-19 avoid travel on cruise ships, including river cruises, worldwide, regardless of vaccination status,” the agency said.
The CDC guidance is a new blow for an industry that was devastated during the first year of the pandemic. The stocks of Royal Caribbean Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line, and Carnival fell on the news.
The CDC warned that Covid transmits easily between people in close quarters on ships, and the chance of catching the virus on a cruise is very high even for people who are vaccinated and have received a booster dose.
The CDC advised people who decide to go on a cruise to get vaccinated before their trip and receive a booster dose if eligible. Facemasks should also be worn in shared spaces, and passengers who are not fully vaccinated should self-quarantine for five days after travel, according to the agency.

The CDC also said people who go on a cruise should get tested one to three days before departing, and three to five days after their trip, regardless of vaccination status or symptoms. However, many Americans shopping for at-home tests have found shelves in many pharmacies empty amid a nationwide shortage, and lines at clinics are sometimes hourslong.
Brian Salerno with the Cruise Lines International Association said the trade group was frustrated by the CDC’s decision.
“We’re obviously disappointed at the CDC’s decision to raise the travel level for cruise today—especially given the overwhelming level of effectiveness of cruise protocols that are resulting in significantly lower level of cases on cruise as compared to land,” said Salerno, senior vice president for maritime policy.

CNBC Health & Science

Anne Madison, a spokesperson for the industry group, said the Covid cases identified on cruise ships make up a slim majority of the total population onboard.
“The majority of those cases are asymptomatic or mild in nature, posing little to no burden on medical resources onboard or onshore,” Madison said.
Covid cases in the U.S. have surged to a pandemic high. The U.S. reported a seven-day average of more than 300,000 daily new Covid cases as of Wednesday, an increase of 82% from last week, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Wednesday that omicron is driving the rapid increase in Covid cases.
White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci on Wednesday said data out of South Africa and the United Kingdom, countries that were hit by omicron earlier, indicate that the variant is less severe than delta. However, Fauci urged against complacency, warning that omicron could still cause a spike in hospitalizations that burdens health-care systems simply by transmitting much faster.
About 82,000 Americans are hospitalized with Covid as of Thursday, according to a seven-day average of data from the Department of Health and Human Services, up 17% over the past week.
Correction: Norwegian Cruise Line and Carnival stocks were down more than 2% on the news. Royal Caribbean fell 1.93%. A previous version misstated Royal Caribbean’s stock move.

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

Powerball’s top prize has been growing since Oct. 4, when someone won $699.8 million.
Six jackpots worth an aggregate $2 billion were won this year in Powerball.
Mega Millions, meanwhile, has its last drawing of the year on Friday.

Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images

New Year’s Day luck could end up making a Powerball player a few hundred million dollars richer. 
No ticket matched all six numbers drawn Wednesday, which means the jackpot has climbed higher: It’s now $500 million for Saturday night’s drawing, up from $441 million. The top prize has been growing since Oct. 4 — that’s 37 drawings with no winner — when someone hit a $699.8 million jackpot.

While this means it’s a wrap for Powerball’s 2021 drawings, six jackpots worth an aggregate $2 billion were won this year, ranging from $23.2 million to $731.1 million.
More from Personal Finance:The 10 best cities for ringing in the new yearWhat to know if you want to start investingGetting back on track after blowing your budget
Of course, the advertised jackpot amount reflects what you’d get if you claim the prize as an annuity paid in 30 installments over 29 years — and nearly all jackpot winners choose the reduced lump sum option.
This year’s winners were no different: All chose immediate cash, which translates into $1.4 billion combined.

Yet that still isn’t what winners ended up with. A federal withholding tax of 24% is applied first. That levy reduced the collective amount by $336 million, leaving winners with just over $1 billion.

Additional federal taxes generally would be due as well, given that the top income tax rate is 37%. And there would be state taxes unless you live where lottery winnings are not taxed.
As for Mega Millions, its jackpot is $221 million ($159.6 million cash option) for its last drawing of the year, set for Friday night. So far in 2021, the game has produced six jackpot winners, with the aggregate advertised amount won at $2.3 billion. The collective cash option was $1.6 billion, and the 24% federal tax withholding reduced that by $384,000 to $1.2 billion.

Regardless, the take-home amounts are more than most people see in a lifetime. Across all jobs and education attainment, the median lifetime earnings for workers are $1.7 million, according to research from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce.
The chance of a single ticket hitting the jackpot in either game is slim: 1 in 292 million for Powerball and 1 in 302 million for Mega Millions.

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More