Raphael Stevens

Game Plan Summit

Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino and Smith Entertainment Group CEO Ryan Smith said live events are more central than ever to culture and commerce in a post-pandemic world.
Despite headlines about rising ticket prices, Rapino argued that concerts are still underpriced compared to sporting events.
Smith and Rapino are partnering on a new downtown entertainment district in Salt Lake City anchored by sports and music venues.

Source: Getty Images

Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino and Smith Entertainment Group CEO Ryan Smith said this week that live events are more central than ever to culture and commerce in a post-pandemic world.
Speaking at CNBC Sport and Boardroom’s Game Plan conference on Tuesday, the executives said that the high demand for in-person events has been unmistakable.

“No matter what you bring to that table that day, you unite around that one shared experience,” Rapino said. “For those two hours, I tend to drop whatever baggage I have and have a shared moment.”
According to Goldman Sachs, the live music industry is expected to grow at a 7.2% compounded annual rate through 2030, fueled by millennials and Generation Z.
Smith bought the NBA’s Utah Jazz in 2020 and launched a new NHL franchise in the state in 2024.
“In sports, we’re really media companies,” Smith said. “We’ve got talent, we’ve got distribution. We’re putting on a show or a wedding or something every night.”

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Rapino also emphasized how the economics of music have shifted. With streaming revenue dwarfed by touring income, live shows have become a primary source of revenue for artists.

“The artist is going to make 98% of their money from the show,” he said. “We just did Beyonce’s tour. She’s got 62 transport trucks outside. That’s a Super Bowl she’s putting on every night.”
Despite headlines about rising ticket prices, Rapino argued that concerts are still underpriced compared to sporting events.
“In sports, I joke it’s like a badge of honor to spend [$70,000] for Knicks courtside,” Rapino said. “When you read about the ticket prices going up, it’s still an average concert price [of] $72. Try going to a Laker game for that, and there’s 80 of them [in a season].”
The cost of admission for movies, theaters and concerts rose 3.4% in August from a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ consumer price index data, outpacing the full index’s increase of 2.9%. Meanwhile, the cost of admission for sporting events last month fell 0.5%, compared to the same time last year.

Ryan Smith attends a media opportunity prior to the premier game for the Utah Hockey Club at Delta Center in Salt Lake City on Oct. 8, 2024.
Bruce Bennett | Getty Images Sport | Getty Images

Looking ahead, both executives are betting heavily on Salt Lake City as a growth market. Smith and Rapino are partnering on a new downtown entertainment district in the Utah city anchored by sports and music venues.
The plan is to eventually host 100 to 200 nights of events a year, from NBA and NHL games to major concerts.
“If we do our job, that’s probably a million people coming downtown,” Smith said. “The impact it has on a city and businesses is almost indescribable.”
Rapino also said technology, including AI-driven ticketing, could make buying tickets smoother.
“Most websites are going to be challenged in the future, as you’re going to use that chatbot,” Rapino said. “We think ticketing, and how you find that ticket and how you can get that ticket, needs to be improved.”

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Frontier Airlines CEO Barry Biffle fired back at United’s CEO for saying the discount airline model is dying in the U.S.
United CEO Scott Kirby has long said the budget airline model in the U.S. doesn’t work, pointing to higher costs and a need for growth.
Frontier’s CEO said his costs are lower and that he caters to both high-end and price-sensitive customers.

President and CEO of Frontier Airlines, Barry Biffle attends The Future of Everything presented by the Wall Street Journal at Spring Studios on May 17, 2022, in New York City.
Steven Ferdman | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

Frontier Airlines CEO Barry Biffle fired back at his counterpart at United Airlines who said the deep-discount model in the U.S. is dead.
“That’s cute,” Biffle said Wednesday at the Skift Global Forum, a travel conference in New York. “If he’s good at math he would understand that we have a [flight] oversupply issue in the United States.”

Biffle’s comments were a response to United CEO Scott Kirby, who said last week at an airline conference in Long Beach, California, that he thought the largest U.S. discounter, Spirit Airlines, would go out of business. Spirit in August entered its second bankruptcy in less than a year after failing to find sturdy financial footing.
When Kirby was asked why he thought Spirit would shut down, he responded, “Because I’m good at math.”
Kirby added that if Biffle wants Frontier to be the largest of the U.S. discount carriers, then he’s going to be the “last man standing on a sinking ship.”

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Biffle pointed to his airline’s lower unit costs — 7.50 cents per available seat mile, excluding fuel, compared with far-larger United’s 12.36 cents per available seat mile in the second quarter — and said the budget carrier caters to customers who might not be flying at all, as well as those who want a cheap flight but are splurging on other things when traveling, like luxury hotels.
When asked Wednesday about whether Frontier relies on extra capacity left on the table by United, Biffle replied, “That’s like the CEO of Nordstrom saying ‘I allow customers to buy jeans from Walmart.'”

Both Frontier and United, along with other airlines like JetBlue Airways, have announced that they’re adding new flights on major Spirit routes to win over its customers as it struggles.
Ultra-low-cost airlines have struggled from a jump in costs after the pandemic, an oversupply of domestic U.S. flights that have pushed down fares, and competition from larger airlines that offer both no-frills basic economy tickets and global networks to burn frequent flyer models on.
“Customers care about value, and they don’t get value on a [ultra-low-cost carrier],” Kirby told CNBC on Tuesday.
Those budget airlines long relied on rock-bottom fares and fees for everything else from seat assignments to cabin baggage, a model large network airlines have copied with their basic economy tickets. Now, Spirit, Frontier and others are looking to offer more upscale offerings and bundles that include things they used to charge for.
Frontier swung to a $70 million net loss in the second quarter but forecast unit revenue growth in the mid-to-high single digits in the third, and to “provide a solid foundation for profitability in 2026.”

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Correction: This story has been updated to correct the airline unit costs. More

Eli Lilly said its experimental pill outperformed Novo Nordisk’s own oral drug in the first head-to-head study comparing the two medicines in patients with Type 2 diabetes. 
Eli Lilly said its pill, orforglipron, was superior at the trial’s main goal of lowering blood sugar levels at 52 weeks compared to Novo Nordisk’s oral semaglutide, and helped patients lose more weight.
But it’s less clear how Eli Lilly’s pill compares to a higher dose of oral semaglutide, especially in patients who are overweight or have obesity without diabetes.

A sign with the company logo sits outside of the headquarters of Eli Lilly in Indianapolis, Indiana, on March 17, 2024.
Scott Olson | Getty Images

Eli Lilly on Wednesday said its experimental pill outperformed Novo Nordisk’s own oral drug in the first head-to-head study comparing the two medicines in patients with Type 2 diabetes. 
The late-stage study comes as Eli Lilly’s pill inches closer to becoming another needle-free alternative in the blockbuster market for GLP-1s, without dietary restrictions. But it may be too soon to establish a clear winner in the pill space, as there is no data comparing Eli Lilly’s drug with a higher dose of Novo Nordisk’s pill in patients with obesity.

Eli Lilly said its pill, orforglipron, was superior at the trial’s main goal of lowering blood sugar levels at 52 weeks compared with Novo Nordisk’s oral semaglutide. The highest dose of orforglipron helped lower hemoglobin A1c — a measure of blood sugar levels — by 2.2% compared with 1.4% with Novo Nordisk’s pill. 
The highest dose of Eli Lilly’s drug also helped patients lose an average of 9.2% of their weight, or 19.7 pounds, compared with 5.3% weight loss, or 11 pounds, with Novo Nordisk’s pill. Orforglipron’s weight loss was 8.2% when analyzing all patients regardless of discontinuations, while oral semaglutide’s was 5.3%. 
The results suggest an up to 36-milligram dose of Eli Lilly’s pill may be more effective at treating diabetes patients than an up to 14-milligram dose of oral semaglutide, which is already approved under the name Rybelsus for Type 2 diabetes.
“For the majority of patients, this could be the main medicine that they need to control their Type 2 diabetes as well as their obesity,” Eli Lilly Chief Scientific Officer Dan Skovronsky said in an interview.
Dr. Michael Weintraub, an endocrinologist at NYU Langone Diabetes & Endocrine Associates, said orforglipron’s management of blood sugar levels is “quite impressive not only compared to other oral Type 2 diabetes medications but all Type 2 diabetes medications including injectables.”

The company on Wednesday said it expects to apply for approval of orforglipron for the treatment of Type 2 diabetes in 2026. Eli Lilly hopes to launch its pill globally “this time next year,” CEO David Ricks told CNBC in early August.
Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk are vying for a greater share of the booming market for GLP-1s, which some analysts say could be worth around $100 billion by the 2030s. The space is eager for more convenient options that could ease the supply shortfalls and access hurdles created by the pricey weekly injections currently dominating it.
Oral GLP-1s could grow to be worth $50 billion of that total, according to some analyst estimates.

Limits to the study

But it’s less clear how Eli Lilly’s pill compares with higher doses of oral semaglutide, especially in patients who are overweight or have obesity without diabetes. Novo Nordisk expects U.S. regulators to approve a higher 25-milligram dose of its pill for the treatment of obesity by the end of the year, and has also studied a 50-milligram dose of the drug in a phase three trial.
Weintraub said comparing the 36-milligram dose of Eli Lilly’s pill to oral semaglutide at a lower dose than what may be approved in the future “is short-changing semaglutide.” He added that patients with diabetes typically lose less weight than those without the condition, so the closer to 15% weight loss that oral semaglutide has shown in people with obesity is “certainly not expected” in a study on Type 2 diabetes patients.
Because the trial showed Eli Lilly’s pill was better at reducing blood sugar and weight only when compared with specific lower doses of oral semaglutide, “there are several orders that kind of slow the roll a little bit as we look at the results and get kind of excited,” said Dr. Jaime Almandoz, medical director of the Weight Wellness Program at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
Almandoz said it’s “a little too early to say that one is kind of a leader in the class” of drugs. But he said head-to-head data is helpful as doctors determine which pill may be a better fit for certain diabetes patients. 
Detailed results on the trial will be presented at a medical meeting and published in a peer-reviewed journal.
The company can’t run studies on medicines from competitors that aren’t approved yet, Skovronsky noted. But he said he’s confident Eli Lilly’s pill can beat higher doses of oral semaglutide in head-to-head trials. 

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Skovronsky likened orforglipron’s efficacy to that of “new-generation” injectable GLP-1s. He appears to be referring to Eli Lilly’s blockbuster diabetes injection Mounjaro and Novo Nordisk’s competing shot Ozempic.
Meanwhile, Skovronsky said oral semaglutide “is really performing at a lower level, more similar to the first-generation GLP-1s” such as Victoza and Trulicity, older diabetes injections from Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, respectively. 
Rybelsus has been on the market for years, meaning that Eli Lilly’s pill will be a late rival in the diabetes space. But both companies are racing to develop oral GLP-1s for obesity. 
Unlike Novo Nordisk’s oral semaglutide, Eli Lilly’s pill is not a peptide medication. It is a small molecule drug that is absorbed more easily by the body and does not require dietary restrictions.

Trial details

Eli Lilly’s ACHIEVE-3 trial followed nearly 1,700 adults whose Type 2 diabetes was not well managed despite taking an older diabetes drug called Metformin. 
Data on orforglipron’s safety, and how well patients tolerated the drug, was consistent with previous trials. The most common side effects were gastrointestinal and mild to moderate in severity. 
Eli Lilly said 9.7% of patients on the highest dose of its pill discontinued treatment due to side effects in the trial. That compares with 4.9% of participants on the highest dose of Novo Nordisk’s drug. 
But Eli Lilly noted that the study was not designed to compare the safety and tolerability of the two drugs. 
Almandoz said orforglipron’s safety and tolerability were “nothing outside the realm of what one would expect” from GLP-1s. 
“I don’t think we see any signals there that are concerning with orforglipron relative to semaglutide,” he said. 
Skovronsky said the company is “satisfied” with the tolerability, adding that it performed consistently with GLP-1 injections.
Meanwhile, Weintraub said seeing a discontinuation rate due to side effects that is “almost double” that of Novo Nordsk’s pill “certainly gives me pause.” He said Eli Lilly’s pill has shown a similar rate in previous late-stage trials, so its gastrointestinal side effects are “likely something we will need to be mindful of and counsel patients accordingly.”

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Game Plan Summit

College sports leaders are crunching the numbers as they head toward payments for players and new avenues for revenue growth.
Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman, Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner Jim Phillips and Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark spoke at CNBC Sport and Boardroom’s Game Plan conference this week.
“Revenues have never been greater,” Phillips said. “Expenses for our schools also continues to go up. Is it sustainable, is really the question.”

Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman, Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner Jim Phillips, and Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark.
Porter Binks | Matt Kelley | Stacy Revere | Getty Images

College sports leaders are crunching the numbers as they head toward payments for players and new avenues for revenue growth.
Speaking at CNBC Sport and Boardroom’s Game Plan conference on Tuesday, Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman, Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner Jim Phillips and Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark addressed the NCAA’s $2.8 billion settlement that’s enabled paying players directly and the rollout of player revenue sharing.

“Revenues have never been greater,” Phillips said. “Expenses for our schools also continues to go up. Is it sustainable, is really the question.”
Phillips said every ACC school has opted for the revenue sharing model, initially capped at $20.5 million per school next year to allocate to pay players. However, that cap will continue to incrementally rise for the next decade.
“In the league office, we continue to try to find new revenue streams that are available to us that will help offset some of those expenses [of paying student-athletes],” Phillips said.
Ackerman echoed that uncertainty, highlighting the struggles over allocating dollars between the sports and between men’s and women’s programs.
“Football is driving the revenue story. Men’s basketball is second … So the question is, should half of that revenue be shared, no matter what, no matter who’s generating it,” Ackerman said. “I believe, frankly, it’s going to end up in the courts, unless Congress gets involved.”

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For his part, Yormark dismissed the notion that college sports are in “financial crisis,” saying warnings were “overly provocative.” But he stressed that schools are doubling down because athletics has become central to their brands.
“Our presidents, our boards, our athletic departments, understand that athletics sits at the front porch of all these universities. They recognize that now it drives everything in the ecosystem,” Yormark said. “[The schools] understand that investing in athletics is the right thing to be doing.”
That investment may soon include private capital. Yormark said the Big 12 has studied outside partnerships, though he ruled out a direct equity sale. Phillips and Ackerman said their conferences are each fielding proposals from Wall Street.
“We’re not going to sell a stake in this conference,” Yormark said. “But do we partner with someone strategically that provides different types of resources, capital, strategic resources? That potentially could happen.”
Conferences are also rethinking how to carve up television money. The ACC has shifted to an incentive-based model that distributes media rights revenue partly by TV viewership and postseason performance.
“You can go hunt what you kill,” Phillips said. “If you’re 4-8 in football or 12-2 and make the playoff, you’re going to get a bigger slice.”
Yormark said the Big 12 may consider similar changes but not immediately, given the integration of eight new schools.
As for pooling television rights across conferences ­­­­­­— a move some say could mirror the NFL — Yormark dismissed the idea.
“Scarcity drives demand. Demand creates value,” he said. “Hope isn’t a strategy… In theory, it works, but the devil is in the details.”
Despite the cost pressures, all three commissioners saw growth potential in new sports, particularly women’s volleyball, which is drawing record TV audiences and sellout crowds.
“I think volleyball is a safe bet,” Yormark said. More

Game Plan Summit

NHL players will take the ice at the 2026 Milan Olympic Games after not participating since the 2014 Sochi Games.
Gary Bettman, who as commissioner of the NHL, first cleared the path for players to take the Olympic ice, said it will ultimately be a boon to the league to return.
“We decided it was important to go back and be on what is one of the most visible platforms in the world,” Bettman said at CNBC Sport and Boardroom’s Game Plan conference in Santa Monica, California, on Tuesday.

Gary Bettman, NHL commissioner, speaking on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Nov. 20, 2024.

The 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan will mark the first time in 12 years that NHL players will return to the Games, something NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman is expecting to have a big effect on the league.
“Ultimately, in terms of balancing the pros and cons, we decided it was important to go back and be on what is one of the most visible platforms in the world,” Bettman said at CNBC Sport and Boardroom’s Game Plan conference in Santa Monica, California, on Tuesday.

Prior to Bettman being named commissioner in 1993, NHL players had not participated in the Olympics. After seeing firsthand the effect that Olympic player participation had on the NBA, Bettman said, the league and the NHL Players’ Association worked to have the players participate starting in 1998.
But that participation stopped after the 2014 Sochi Games, which Bettman said was a reflection of the evolution of the business of the league and the sports industry in general.
“It was a bit of a mixed bag,” Bettman said of the NHL’s participation in the Olympics. “Even though we were shut down for two weeks, our players were treated like invited guests,” he said, adding that the league and its teams “had no control over anything; we didn’t have the rights to promote ourselves.”
There were also competition challenges as well, given the number of players some teams were sending.
Part of what drove the NHL back to the Olympic ice was a shift in that relationship. The NHL and NHLPA’s new deal with the IOC changes some aspects of their commercial arrangement and also upgrades the players’ living conditions while at the Games.

But Bettman also noted it came down to the desire from the players to play best-on-best at a national level, something that was highlighted in the league’s successful 4 Nations Face-Off tournament earlier this year.
“It became clear to me that it was important to our players, who have a history and tradition of representing their countries,” he said.
The NHL will stop play for nearly two weeks this season, and Bettman said Olympic participation “won’t be without its difficulties.” The NHL has not yet formally guaranteed its players will participate in the 2030 Games.
“But on balance, it should be worth it,” he said.
Disclosure: CNBC parent NBCUniversal owns NBC Sports and NBC Olympics. NBC Olympics is the U.S. broadcast rights holder to all Summer and Winter Games through 2036.

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