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The Los Angeles Dodgers have deferred over $1 billion in current player contracts in the past few years, an unprecedented amount that has made headlines this offseason.
The deferrals have sparked anger and derision among some baseball fans questioning their compliance with Major League Baseball regulations.
While teams have negotiated deferrals into contracts for decades, the Dodgers’ financial and team success has exacerbated current concerns over competitive imbalance in MLB.

Members of the Los Angeles Dodgers celebrate on the field after winning Game 5 to win the 2024 World Series presented by Capital One between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium on Oct. 30, 2024.
Mike Lawrence | Major League Baseball | Getty Images

As Major League Baseball’s spring training kicks into gear, the Los Angeles Dodgers are wrapping up a nearly perfect offseason.
After the Dodgers captured the World Series in October, the team notched more wins in the winter. The club retained key players, brought in coveted free agents and deferred over $130 million in new contracts — sending many baseball fans into an uproar that has reignited backlash to the sport’s financial model.

Criticism of the Dodgers deferring money, or delaying paying players much of their salary until after their contract with the team ends, first began in 2023. The team signed Shohei Ohtani to a then-record 10-year, $700 million deal, but deferred $680 million of that total. The team’s offseason this year amplified that criticism into outright fury, provoking allegations that the Dodgers manipulated MLB’s salary system to build a superteam.
While contract deferrals have become more common across MLB, the Dodgers have relied on them more than any other team. Of roughly $1.5 billion in known deferred money on active MLB contracts, the Dodgers account for about $1.04 billion — or two-thirds, according to data from sports contract website Spotrac compiled by CNBC.
Contract deferrals can provide advantages to both franchises and players, sports business experts told CNBC. But the practice is just one piece of larger criticism of the fairness and sustainability of MLB’s financial structure. Critics aren’t just angry at the Dodgers’ ability to defer money; they’re frustrated by what they see as a league with no salary cap creating unfavorable conditions for teams unable or unwilling to spend as much as the Dodgers do year after year.
“The Dodgers are definitely way, way, way out in their own space when it comes to these deferral deals,” said N. Jeremi Duru, law professor and director of the Sport & Society Initiative at American University.

The benefits of deferrals

Teams kick salary down the road for a simple reason: They save money now, controlling the cost of a star-studded roster. They may decide present success is worth future liabilities.

Unlike many other professional sports leagues, MLB doesn’t have a salary cap limiting how much teams can pay players. It does, however, enforce a “competitive balance tax,” which levies a fee on teams that exceed a certain payroll threshold. The tax payment depends on the amount by which the payroll exceeds the threshold.
For luxury tax purposes, a team’s payroll is calculated by summing the average annual values of each contract, according to MLB’s current collective bargaining agreement. For contracts with deferred salary, that number typically turns out smaller than if the pay weren’t deferred, so teams can use the practice to lower their tax bills.
The Dodgers, for instance, would have paid Ohtani $70 million a year on a standard version of his contract. But with deferrals, his yearly salary for luxury tax purposes is only $46 million, according to FanGraphs.
Most teams would not feel comfortable punting over $1 billion in salaries to the future, but the Dodgers are one of MLB’s most popular and financially successful franchises. They’ve led the league in home attendance every season since 2013, according to ESPN, and are the second-most valuable team in the league behind the New York Yankees, according to Forbes.
The Dodgers’ market size and global reach grant them the “firepower” to ink expensive but deferred contracts, said David Carter, sports business professor at the University of Southern California and founder of consulting firm Sports Business Group.
“How far down the road can you see revenue coming in from media deals, particularly your local or regional deal? What about sponsorship and sponsorship upside, and what about ticketing? And the Dodgers have been off the charts in those areas for a very long time,” Carter told CNBC.
The Dodgers declined to comment on their use of deferrals.
The benefits of deferrals for players are less obvious. Just as teams save money on tax bills for considerations of how money depreciates over time, players lose out by delaying their payments, Robert Raiola, director of the sports and entertainment group at accounting firm PKF O’Connor Davies, told CNBC.
But players can sacrifice money now to help a club build a World Series contender. Dodgers All-Stars Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts accepted a combined $172 million in deferrals in the years before Ohtani’s deal.

Freddie Freeman #5 of the Los Angeles Dodgers celebrates as he walks to first base after hitting a grand slam home run in the 10th inning during Game 1 of the 2024 World Series presented by Capital One between the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium on Friday, October 25, 2024 in Los Angeles, California.
Rob Tringali | Major League Baseball | Getty Images

And they can recoup some of those losses by deploying strategies, like negotiating for a signing bonus in a contract, to minimize their personal tax bill.
Signing bonuses are taxed by a player’s state of residency, not the states where they play games, so players who live in a state with a smaller or no income tax can receive a larger chunk of the bonus, Raiola said.
Some players with contract deferrals can also save on or avoid state taxes on their deferred payouts if they move to a different state or country. Federal tax law prohibits states from taxing the retirement income of nonresidents, and deferral plans that include relatively equal payments over at least 10 years, like Ohtani’s contract does, stand to qualify as retirement income.

The state of the game

The Dodgers’ extensive usage of deferrals has drawn ire from some baseball fans. As more and more reports of Dodger free agent signings receiving deferred money surfaced on social media this offseason, commentators accused the team of skirting the competitive balance tax and sarcastically compared the Dodgers to buy now, pay later services like Klarna.
Sports business experts stress that the Dodgers are following the rules and are far from the first organization to defer payments. Many current and retired MLB players are still receiving deferred payments from deals struck years ago with former teams — the most notable of which is Bobby Bonilla’s agreement with the New York Mets.
The Dodgers’ ability to shell out on salaries both now and later has sparked fresh complaints about the league’s competitive balance. Even by reducing their tax payments with deferrals, the Dodgers will still pay a league-leading $142 million in luxury taxes in 2025, according to Spotrac. The current deferral debate is a microcosm of a broader gripe that the wealthiest and most successful MLB franchises can use their financial muscle to eliminate parity within the sport.
“Without question, I think there’s a lot of concern from a lot of corners that this is bad for the competitiveness of baseball,” Duru said.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – OCTOBER 30: Stan Kasten, President and CEO of the Los Angeles Dodgers, celebrates with the Commissioner’s Trophy after defeating the New York Yankees 7-6 in Game Five to win the 2024 World Series at Yankee Stadium on October 30, 2024 in the Bronx borough of New York City. (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)
Elsa | Getty Images Sport | Getty Images

Complaints about the best teams dominating the league are nothing new, and MLB does have a revenue-sharing system that redistributes income to the lowest-earning franchises. But some current trends in baseball are amplifying these fears. MLB teams earn much of their revenue from their media rights deals with regional sports networks, many of which have faced financial crises in the past few years.
The Dodgers, meanwhile, enjoy one of the more stable broadcasting arrangements in the league. The team’s current contract, inked in 2013 with Time Warner Cable (now owned by Charter Communications), is reportedly worth between $7 billion and $8 billion over 25 years, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The Dodgers are also at the forefront of MLB’s global expansion efforts, especially in Asia. Already one of the most recognizable MLB teams worldwide, the Dodgers feature three top Japanese players (Ohtani, Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki). All Dodgers games are broadcast in Japan, and this year the team will open its season in Tokyo.
Steven Bank, a business law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the Dodgers are beginning to resemble soccer “superclubs”: historically successful teams like Manchester United that have global fanbases. MLB has to maintain a delicate balance between its biggest names racking up championships and other teams having a chance to win, he said.
“There is an argument from a business perspective that superclubs draw more eyeballs and that that benefits everybody,” Bank said.
Case in point: TV ratings for the Yankees-Dodgers World Series in 2024 jumped 67% from 2023’s championship series between the Texas Rangers and the Arizona Diamondbacks and set several postseason viewing records in Japan.
MLB wants to maintain the competitiveness of the sport, Carter said, but above all the league’s job is to increase the value of its franchises — even if some teams benefit more than others.
“Ultimately, it’s best for the league if these big-market franchises do really well,” Carter told CNBC.

What’s next for MLB

Deferrals will likely remain a contentious topic in MLB for years to come, especially before the league’s collective bargaining agreement expires at the end of 2026.
The league previously tried to eliminate deferrals during negotiations for its last CBA, which took effect in 2022. Commissioner Rob Manfred said in December that deferrals can “at some point become problematic.”
He pointed to a repayment crisis two decades ago, when former Diamondbacks owner Jerry Colangelo negotiated about $250 million in deferred salaries to build a roster that ultimately won the World Series in 2001. The team then faced financial turmoil, raising ticket prices and trading star players to help pay off its debts. The episode spurred MLB to change its rules: Team ownership must now have the funds for deferred salary fully available within a year and a half of a contract being signed, according to the MLB collective bargaining agreement.
“We’ve strengthened our rules in terms of the funding of deferred compensation in order to avoid that kind of problem. But, you know, look, obviously the bigger the numbers get, the bigger the concern,” he said.
MLB referred a CNBC interview request to Manfred’s comments.
Any MLB effort to stop deferrals will likely face opposition from the players union, Duru said, and a prolonged disagreement over the issue could lead to a work stoppage for the league.
For now, deferrals aren’t going anywhere in MLB. Raiola said he expects to see more teams located in higher-tax states to “catch on” and negotiate deferred contracts.
The Dodgers haven’t been the only franchise pushing salary to the future this offseason. Alex Bregman deferred $60 million of his $120 million contract with the Boston Red Sox, while Anthony Santander will receive $61.75 million of his $92.5 million deal with the Toronto Blue Jays as deferred compensation.
It’s not just baseball fans who are upset with the practice. Some California politicians, displeased about the possibility of athletes retiring elsewhere and depriving the state of income taxes, are taking matters into their own hands.
In March 2024, state Sen. Josh Becker introduced legislation that would call on Congress to impose a cap on deferred compensation. The bill, which calls out Ohtani’s contract and claims he could save over $90 million in taxes if he were to retire outside of California, passed the state Senate but was withdrawn by Becker after it received insufficient support in the state Assembly.
“Ohtani’s dodging taxes like curveballs,” Becker told CNBC. “Everyone else is playing fair.”
Becker said deferred compensation was originally intended to help people retiring from more typical jobs, rather than professional athletes. He hopes to reintroduce the bill next year.
Malia Cohen, California’s state controller and a bill sponsor, said the state’s wealthiest residents have an “outsize impact” on California’s income tax revenue and should pay their fair share. Additional tax revenue would help all Californians, she added.
The Dodgers, especially Ohtani, are at the epicenter of the deferral controversy because of the sheer amount of money involved, USC’s Carter said. But until the rules change, the team is entitled to continue its spending spree.
“Everybody seems to be skiing inbounds now,” Carter said. “And so until that’s no longer the case, then this issue need not really be actively revisited.” More

Paramount Pictures spent around $5 million to fix the character design of Sonic in its 2020 “Sonic the Hedgehog” film.
The feature was a success at the box office and has spurred on two more films and a television series. Each follow-up film has outperformed the last.
A fourth installment in the film franchise is due out in 2027.

Paramount Pictures revamped version of Sonic the Hedgehog (r).
Source: Paramount Pictures

Sonic the Hedgehog may be able to run faster than the speed of light, but his film franchise nearly came to a screaming halt in 2019.
A less-than-three-minute trailer released early that year to tease the film’s release, which was just six months away, was widely panned by fans who took to social media to rail against Paramount’s character design. Dubbed “Ugly Sonic,” the blue creature that appeared on film was a far cry from the iconic video game speedster.

Cinematic Sonic, version 1, had more realistic facial features, including human-like teeth, and his body proportions were deemed inconsistent with the character fans grew up with in the ’90s.
“The trailer goes out, and I think it became the most viewed trailer in the history of Paramount Pictures. Which is amazing,” said Toby Ascher, who acquired the rights to Sonic and produced the film franchise. “The only problem was that 90% of people hated the trailer because of the design of Sonic.”
“All of a sudden we went from trying really, really hard to make a really, really faithful video game adaptation to being next in line of the people who had ruined video games for everyone. It just was a disaster of epic proportions,” Ascher added.
The studio pivoted, opting to redesign the title character and push the film’s release back three months to February 2020. The fix cost Paramount around $5 million but resulted in a franchise that has generated nearly $1.2 billion at the global box office. The studio hopes to build on that momentum with a fourth installment in the film franchise, set to debut in 2027.
“The Sonic franchise owes its box office success and longevity to a monumental decision early in the development of the first films’ marketing campaign,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “A re-design of a main character is no small thing. … These decisions can make or break what is every studio’s dream of having a single film turn into a long-term revenue generating franchise. The return on investment by turning an ‘ugly’ Sonic into a beautiful revenue generating franchise is undeniable.”

Bringing Sonic to the big screen

Ascher first acquired the rights to Sonic the Hedgehog in 2013, a time in Hollywood when video game-inspired films had failed to resonate with audiences.
“When we first started working on Sonic, making a video game adaptation was, like, a really bad idea,” he told CNBC.
No film based on a video game property had, to that point, managed to earn a positive rating from review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. It wasn’t until 2019 that a video game-based film generated a “fresh” rating on the site, indicating more than 60% positive reviews.

Ben Schwartz voices Sonic in Paramount Pictures’ “Sonic the Hedgehog.”
Paramount Pictures

“I don’t think anyone in town really thought making a Sonic movie was a good idea,” Ascher said. “But, I think our strategy was that we had grown up with these games. We’ve grown up with these characters, and we wanted to treat them like any other character. We wanted to give them real emotional arcs, and real emotional stories where you could relate to them.”
Ascher noted that previous video game adaptations typically focused on worldbuilding rather than character development.
“What we’ve been able to do is inject into the franchise heart, and I think that that’s what’s made it different,” said Neal Moritz, Ascher’s producing partner and producer of franchises like “The Fast and the Furious” and “21 Jump Street.”
Both Ascher and Moritz noted that while the filmmaking team behind the first “Sonic the Hedgehog” film overhauled the main character’s design, the story remained pretty much the same.

‘We really screwed up’

The filmmaking team was blindsided by audiences’ reactions to the first trailer, but were resolute in trying to resolve the issue rather than shelve the film or release it in its current form.
Moritz said he made an “impassioned speech” to the heads of Paramount and Sega to allow the filmmakers to fix the mistake.

Paramount Pictures

As Moritz recalls, he told executives: “We really screwed up here, but there’s an incredible amount of interest and what we need to do is fix it … We need some more money and we need some more time. If you give that to us, I think we could turn this thing around.”
“I give both Paramount and Sega a lot of credit,” Moritz said. “They said ‘OK.'”
In the redesign, the team brought back Sonic’s iconic white gloves and classic red shoes. They reinfused the character with some of his cartoon roots, and six months after the first trailer, Paramount released a new iteration.
“The fans saw that we were trying to be really genuine in our love for this franchise,” Ascher said, noting that in the wake of the first trailer the team began engaging more with fans and focus groups to drum up feedback and inspiration.
The new trailer was well-received by fans, and three months later “Sonic the Hedgehog” opened to $58 million at the box office. The feature went on to collect $146 million domestically before the pandemic shuttered theaters. Globally, it pulled in $302 million.

The future of Sonic

The Sonic franchise has continued to thrive in the following years, with each follow-up feature outperforming the last.
“Sonic the Hedgehog 2” snared $190 million domestically and $403 million globally, while “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” tallied $235 million stateside and $485 million worldwide.
“That’s a big jump,” said Marc Weinstock, Paramount’s president of worldwide marketing and distribution. “I get excited that every new movie does better than the last one, which is rare.”
Following the success of the second “Sonic” film, the studio’s then-president and CEO of Paramount Pictures, Brian Robbins, greenlit a “Knuckles” series based on the franchise for the company’s streaming service, Paramount+, as well as a third Sonic film.
Sonic was becoming multi-platform, much like Robbins and Paramount had done for franchises like “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” “A Quiet Place,” “Spongebob Squarepants” and “Paw Patrol.”
The “Knuckles” show generated more than 11 million global viewing hours in its first 28 days on Parmount+.
The theatrical success also rocketed Sonic from a $70 million licensing business to one that generates more than $1 billion in retail revenue annually, according to Ivo Gerscovich, Sega’s senior vice president and chief business and brand officer of Sonic the Hedgehog.
“The great thing about Sonic — and the success of Sonic from the very beginning — is that we basically have listened to the fans from day one,” Robbins, now co-CEO of Paramount, said. “The fans are fanatical about this franchise and love this franchise and know this franchise. Because of that, they’ve become really key in shaping the franchise … They evangelize it.”

Still from Paramount’s “Sonic the Hedgehog 2.”

Fans inspired the casting of Keanu Reeves as Shadow, an archrival of Sonic, in the third Sonic film. And the filmmaking team says it continues to look to fans to inspire which characters it will add to the films and series next.
Ascher and Moritz both teased that the fourth Sonic film with again feature a new fan-favorite character, but said the team will continue to expand the franchise’s universe at a slow pace.
“If all of a sudden we bring every character, they are not going to get the time that the audience needs to understand them and relate to them and really fall in love with them,” Ascher said. “So, as we bring characters in, whether it’s film or it’s TV, the most important thing is that they have a good story that really showcases the character in an incredible way.”
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. NBCUniversal owns Rotten Tomatoes and is the distributor of “The Fast and the Furious” films. More

American will start testing free inflight internet service on three routes next week.
The carrier is under pressure to offer complimentary Wi-Fi as more airlines launch the service free of charge.
American has been in the process of working to win back customers after a failed business travel sales strategy last year.

The main cabin of a American Airlines Boeing 777-300ER jet. 
Mary Altaffer | AP

American Airlines is planning to test complimentary inflight Wi-Fi starting next week as pressure mounts on carriers to offer the service free of charge.
The tests will be available on three flights: Between hub Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina and Raleigh-Durham International Airport; Charlotte and Jacksonville International Airport in Florida; and between Miami International Airport and Chicago O’Hare International Airport.

More and more carriers have either launched or are preparing to offer free inflight Wi-Fi, making it harder for competitors to charge for connectivity. American’s prices vary and are some of the U.S. industry’s highest, with flight passes often topping $20.
It was not immediately clear whether American will expand complimentary service to larger swaths of its network, and if so, when.

Delta Air Lines two years ago announced it would make Wi-Fi free for members of its SkyMiles loyalty program, following JetBlue Airways. United Airlines plans to offer complimentary Wi-Fi on board this year using Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite Wi-Fi, a service Hawaiian Airlines, which was acquired by Alaska Airlines, also uses.
“Through this test, we’ll be assessing customer take rates for inflight Wi-Fi, evaluating our provider and aircraft capacity, and – perhaps most important – measuring the impact to customer satisfaction,” American’s chief customer officer, Heather Garboden, said in a staff memo Friday.
In addition to facing more competition for a complimentary service, Fort Worth, Texas-based American has been in the process of working to win back customers after a failed business travel sales strategy last year.
“While relatively small in scope, this is already a big stride in our organization’s very critical work to give our customers what we know they want,” Garboden said.

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The makers of Easter egg dye kits are bracing for the potential fallout if the egg shortage doesn’t begin to clear up before the April 20 holiday.
For many companies that specialize in these activity sets, egg dye kits and related products make up a significant share of annual revenue.
Some companies still expect to see solid business this Easter, bolstered by three extra weeks of selling and the draw of the tradition.

Melkinimages | E+ | Getty Images

The egg aisle is anything but cheaper by the dozen these days — and that’s becoming a big problem ahead of the Easter holiday.
The makers of Easter egg dye kits are bracing for the potential fallout if the egg shortage doesn’t begin to clear up before the April 20 holiday. For many companies that specialize in these activity sets, egg dye kits and related products make up a significant share of annual revenue. Diminished sales could have a major impact on their bottom lines.

“I think sales will be down,” said Ashley Phelps, founder and CEO of Color Kitchen, a plant-based baking decoration company. “That remains to be seen, but I think it probably will be.”
Wholesale egg prices have eclipsed record levels, reaching a high of $8.58 per dozen amid a domestic bird flu outbreak, according to global commodity data firm Expana. More than 52 million egg-laying birds have died, leaving the national flock at just 280 million, a critically low level, said Ryan Hojnowski, a market reporter at Expana.
He noted that rising prices have slowed consumer demand as retail egg prices average around $6 per dozen or higher. Additionally, many stores have implemented purchasing limits, restricting the number of cartons that customers can buy at one time.
The combination of inflated price and limited availability could curtail sales of eggs for the Easter holiday, ultimately affecting the demand for egg dye kits.
Natural Earth Paint, a company that manufactures natural art supplies and craft kits for kids, typically sells between 40,000 and 50,000 egg dye kits around the Easter holiday, according to founder Leah Fanning. So far this year, the company’s retail partners have ordered only 7,000 kits.

“It’s definitely a huge drop,” Fanning said, noting that most buyers have cited the egg shortage for the smaller orders.
Fanning told CNBC that the egg dye kits have been Natural Earth Paint’s bestselling product for 13 years and kept the company in business for its first eight years. Of the company’s more than 40 products, the egg dye kit remains its “absolute bestseller.”
She noted that while the majority of Natural Earth Paint’s sales come from retail locations, online sales typically pick up around three weeks before Easter. That leaves the chance that direct-to-consumer sales could get a boost in mid-March.

A sign in a supermarket in New York City asks customers to limit their purchase of eggs to one carton, Feb. 13, 2025. The avian flu epidemic in the U.S. has sharply reduced the supply and raised the prices of eggs.
Anadolu | Getty Images

Color Kitchen said its Easter items represent 20% of the company’s total stock of items and outpace sales of all other items, including its Christmas icing kits.
Phelps noted that most retailers order these egg kits months ahead of the holiday to ensure they are in stock immediately after Valentine’s Day. She said retailers “took a little less product this year” given sensitivity to the inflationary environment.
“The other concern is that, some of the grocery stories, if they don’t sell through, then we get charged back for product that goes discounted to try and move it out of the store,” Phelps said. “So, that’s where we’ll get hit if the stuff that’s already been shipped out to grocery stores does not sell. That could potentially be very bad.”
Phelps said 75% of Color Kitchen sales are from the shelf. The remaining 25% is from direct-to-consumer sales on its website and on sites such as Amazon.

Walking on eggshells

There are some companies that still expect to see solid business this Easter. The holiday takes place in late April, giving companies three more weeks of sales compared with last year.
Hey Buddy Hey Pal, a company that makes the Eggmazing Egg Decorator, a crafting tool that spins eggs so kids can use markers to color them, generates between 85% and 90% of its annual revenue from its Easter product. Last year, the company generated $14 million in sales, a 22% bump from the year prior.
Curtis McGill, co-founder of Hey Buddy Hey Pal, said retailers have ordered fewer of its products this year. Still, the company said it expects another jump of 18% in annual revenue as it’s set to sell between 600,000 and 700,000 egg decorators this year.
Even as egg prices boil over, some dye kit makers see egg decorating as an essential tradition that few families will opt to skip, even if they reduce the number of eggs they use.
Paas, the leader in the egg dye kit space, expects that some families will decorate fewer eggs this year, but said many will still participate in the tradition.
“It’s just such a sticky tradition,” said Joe Ens, CEO of Signature Brands, which owns the 140-year-old iconic Paas brand.
The company recently completed a survey of 120 consumers and found that 94% of them still plan on decorating eggs this holiday.
“And the reason for that, other than the tradition being so important to consumers, is if you really break down the cost of the tradition, it is arguably the most affordable family tradition during any holiday,” he said.
Paas expects to sell more than 10 million kits this year, one of the company’s strongest sell-ins ever, he said.

Arts and crafts store chain Michaels said it’s already seeing shoppers opt for egg-inspired products. The company told CNBC that 43% of its total Easter sales so far this year have been for plaster, plastic and craft eggs.
Michaels said a particular craft egg kit designed to “mimic the traditional egg-decorating experience” is selling nearly three times faster than the company had anticipated.
Similarly, Hey Buddy Hey Pal expects some families may opt to purchase wooden eggs instead of real ones. Though the alternatives are typically more expensive than real eggs, they’re an opportunity to keep the creations around long after the holiday is over.
“A lot could happen between now and then, we can continue to see an outbreak of avian flu and some different egg farms that hadn’t been affected,” said McGill. “It could get worse before it gets better. That’s not the projections, but at this point … I’m just gonna hold my breath until we get to April the 20th.” More

Elon Musk said he’s sending his Starlink satellite internet terminals to the Federal Aviation Administration while saying, without providing evidence, that current technology poses a risk to air travel safety.
Executives at major airlines told CNBC Thursday that they do not see the FAA infrastructure as an immediate safety risk.
The FAA said it has been considering Starlink for some sites since the prior administration.

An American Airlines Airbus A319 airplane takes off past the air traffic control tower at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, January 11, 2023
Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images

Elon Musk said Thursday that he’s sending his Starlink satellite internet terminals to the Federal Aviation Administration while saying, without providing evidence, that current technology poses a risk to air travel safety.
The billionaire and top advisor to President Donald Trump, who has been tasked with cutting costs throughout the federal government, posted the claims on his social media platform, X.

Executives at major airlines told CNBC on Thursday that they do not see risks to air travel safety because of the FAA’s technology.
The FAA, which regulates Musk’s company SpaceX, didn’t immediately comment but earlier this week said it has been testing Starlink technology in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and in Alaska. The White House referred a request for comment to the FAA.
The FAA “has been considering the use of Starlink since the prior administration to increase reliability at remote sites, including in Alaska,” the agency said Monday. “This week, the FAA is testing one terminal at its facility in Atlantic City and two terminals at non-safety critical sites in Alaska.”
The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the FAA is close to canceling a contract with Verizon for new communication technology for air traffic control and giving it instead to Musk’s Starlink.
Musk said Thursday on X: a “Verizon communication system to air traffic control is breaking down very rapidly.” Verizon said in a statement that “the FAA systems currently in place are run by L3Harris and not Verizon.” He later corrected himself and said that L3Harris is responsible for the “rapidly declining” system.

L3Harris didn’t immediately return request for comment.
Verizon said it is working on replacing older air traffic control technology.
“Our Company is working on building the next generation system for the FAA which will support the Agency’s mission for safe and secure air travel,” Verizon said in its statement. “We are at the beginning of a multi-year contract to replace antiquated, legacy systems. Our teams have been working with the FAA’s technology teams and our solution stands ready to be deployed. We continue to partner with the FAA on achieving its modernization objectives.”
Musk didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Some Democrat lawmakers have raised concerns about Musk’s role in the Trump administration while also potentially working to provide technology to one of his regulators.
“While I support efforts to modernize our air traffic control system and improve aviation safety, this decision raises conflicts-of-interest concerns, given Elon Musk’s dual position as Chief Executive Officer of SpaceX and wide-ranging role in the Trump administration,” wrote Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., to Chris Rocheleau, acting head of the FAA, on Wednesday.
Others have raised alarms after the Trump administration laid off hundreds of FAA employees, though they do not include air traffic controllers.
“At a minimum, we need to know why this sudden reduction was necessary, what type of work these employees were doing, and what kind of analysis FAA conducted – if any – to ensure this would not adversely impact safety, increase flight delays or harm FAA operations,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., wrote to Rocheleau on Feb. 19.

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The FAA has said it has retained staff “who perform safety critical functions. The FAA does not comment on ongoing certification work.”
Airlines for years have pushed for air traffic modernization. Carriers have long complained about how older systems have not kept up with the industry’s needs, leading to flight delays that cost both passengers and carriers. Air travel demand hit records after the pandemic.
“Carriers have made remarkable changes and significant investments in technologies, operations, product and people,” Airlines for America, which represents major U.S. carriers, said Thursday. “The government needs to do the same in an organized and timely way.”
Musk’s comments on air safety failures, which didn’t include evidence, come after last month’s fatal collision between an American Airlines regional jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter, killing all 67 people on board the two aircraft. It ended an unprecedented period of air travel safety in the U.S., marking the first fatal passenger airline crash in the country since 2009 and the deadliest since 2001.
Last week, more than a dozen aviation industry groups and labor unions, urged lawmakers to approve “emergency funding” for air traffic control modernization and staffing.

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Fox, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery disbanded their efforts to launch Venu, a joint sports streaming service.
The media giants have been detailing to investors how they plan to pivot or fill the void of Venu.
For Disney’s ESPN and WBD’s Max it’s a renewed focus on what’s already in the works for their streaming efforts. For Fox, it’ll be launch of a new streamer.

An advertisement for Venu Sports, the sports streaming venture by Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox, hangs at the Fanatics Fest event in New York City on Aug. 16, 2024.
Jessica Golden | CNBC

With Venu done before it even got out of the starting blocks, Fox Corp., Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery have been mapping out how to go it alone in live sports streaming.
Last month the media giants called off the launch of Venu — a planned direct-to-consumer streaming offering of the entirety of the three companies’ live sports — in the face of headwinds, including cost sensitivity and legal challenges.

The joint venture originally planned to launch the platform ahead of the 2024 NFL season.
However, when its debut got blocked by a U.S. judge, the companies went back to the drawing board, and despite appealing the decision, ultimately decided to move forward alone.
Investors have been keen to hear about each company’s next steps as competition ramps up for streaming subscribers and the traditional TV bundle bleeds customers. While Disney’s ESPN already had a strong foothold in streaming live sports, Venu was a bigger piece of the future for Fox and WBD.
In recent weeks, each company has been detailing their plans. Disney’s ESPN and WBD’s Max appear to be putting more weight behind their already announced or existing platforms. Meanwhile, Fox is taking the plunge into direct-to-consumer streaming.
Disney will shift its focus to the direct-to-consumer ESPN streaming platform, a yet-to-be-named flagship app separate from its ESPN+, that was already in the works before Venu collapsed. ESPN’s flagship app is expected to launch in the fall, and CNBC recently reported that it will add some user generated content in an attempt to attract younger viewers.

This week, WBD executives doubled down on their existing strategy behind streaming service, Max.
On Wednesday the company announced it would include sports and news at no additional cost on the standard and premium tiers of Max. Initially, WBD planned to charge extra for sports. It’s unclear if the reversal was directly related to the end of Venu. Including live sports in the standard Max cost had been part of WBD’s larger strategy discussions for some time, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Unbundling

WBD CEO David Zaslav said during Thursday’s earnings call with investors that one of the key drivers behind Venu was the motivation to put a big library of sports together in one place. He seemed to lament the loss of a singular, sports-centric app, reiterating his belief that bundling content is the best value proposition for consumers and eliminates confusion in finding your favorite leagues or teams.
“It’s not a good consumer experience and the value creation over the last 50 years almost always follows a better consumer experience,” said Zaslav on Thursday, noting WBD’s separate streaming bundle with Disney.
Finding the best value in the bundle has long been Fox’s proposition when staying out of the streaming wars.
Fox took the biggest swing since the dissolution of Venu with plans for its own streaming platform following years of sitting on the sidelines. The company plans to launch an app that offers both news and sports by the end of this year.
The company announced Thursday that it hired Pete Distad, who was previously in charge of Venu, to run its direct-to-consumer streaming service.
Earlier this week at an investor conference, Fox CFO Steve Tomsic said the impending launch of a streaming service shouldn’t be seen as a shift in strategy, noting that Fox isn’t “trying to chase the [streaming] dream that Netflix and Disney and Peacock and Paramount+ are all chasing. That is not our game.”
Fox divested its entertainment assets — a key component to major streaming platforms — in the sale to Disney in 2019, removing Fox from that game, Tomsic said. He added that streaming “does nothing for the consumer” of news and sports, due to how much is sliced and diced on varying platforms.
But rampant cord cutting pushed Fox to step into the streaming game.
“The reality is, as we sit here today, there’s the better part of 50 million households in the U.S. that are now outside the bundle,” Tomsic said this week, adding Fox’s streamer won’t compete with the general entertainment players.

Cost of sports

Live sports have played a pivotal role for media companies as the content that attracts the biggest audiences. This has been true for both traditional TV viewership, as well as streaming platforms looking to grow their subscribers.
In response, the cost of sports rights has ballooned, and media companies have recently become more methodical in what they choose to spend on.
Last week, ESPN stepped away from its long-term relationship with MLB, in part because the price-per-game was getting hard to justify.
And last year, WBD’s Turner Sports lost its rights to air NBA games starting with the 2025-2026 season, but it did pick up some new rights, including to certain college football games and the French Open.
WBD’s Zaslav on Thursday’s earnings call with investors also noted that the company wouldn’t necessarily jump to pay for more sports rights.
“There are sports rights that we can look at opportunistically and say we can make a real return on,” Zaslav said on Thursday’s call. “But you know, we don’t need any more sports anywhere in the world in order to support our business. We buy sports if we think it would enhance our business. And it’s going to get more difficult…[because of] some of those prices being paid.”
During an investor conference in December, Fox’s Tomsic echoed a similar sentiment around sports rights.
Tomsic said while sports are “foundational” to Fox, which notably has the NFL, college football and soccer, the company has “traded in and out” of it in recent years. He highlighted, as examples, that Fox has dropped the NFL’s Thursday Night Football, U.S. Golf and most recently WWE.
When Fox thinks about what makes sense for its sports portfolio, Tomsic said the company looks at the size of the audience and the potential advertising revenue.
“We take a pretty financially hard-nosed view about them, and so we’ll trade in and out of those sports as we see fit,” Tomsic said in December.
Disclosure: Peacock is the streaming service of NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC. More

Pending sales dropped 4.6% from December to the lowest level since the National Association of Realtors began tracking this metric in 2001.
While weather may have been a factor, sales rose month to month in the Northeast.
Home prices have been easing over the last few months in certain areas, with more sellers cutting prices, but nationally they are still higher than they were a year ago.

“For Sale” and “Sale Pending” signs in the West Seattle neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, US, on Tuesday, June 18, 2024. The National Association of Realtors is scheduled to release existing homes sales figures on June 21. 
David Ryder | Bloomberg | Getty Images

High mortgage rates and elevated home prices combined to crush home sales in January.
Pending sales, which are based on signed contracts for existing homes, dropped 4.6% from December to the lowest level since the National Association of Realtors began tracking this metric in 2001. Sales were down 5.2% from January 2024. These sales are an indicator of future closings.

“It is unclear if the coldest January in 25 years contributed to fewer buyers in the market, and if so, expect greater sales activity in upcoming months,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist. “However, it’s evident that elevated home prices and higher mortgage rates strained affordability.”
While weather may have been a factor, sales rose month to month in the Northeast and fell in the West, which would have seen the smallest impact of cold temperatures. Sales fell hardest in the South, which has been the most active region for home sales in recent years.
Mortgage rates were also higher in January. The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed loan spent the first half of December below 7% but then began rising. It was solidly above 7% for all of January, according to Mortgage News Daily.
Home prices have been easing over the last few months in certain areas, with more sellers cutting prices, but nationally they are still higher than they were a year ago.
This drop in sales also came despite the fact that the inventory of homes for sales in January, including houses that were under contract but not yet sold, increased by 17% compared with last year, growing on an annual basis for the 14th month in a row, according to Realtor.com.
“More for-sale inventory has the potential to generate more contract signings, but climbing home supply is not evenly distributed across the U.S.,” noted Hannah Jones, an economist with Realtor.com. “Moreover, many areas with high demand see relatively low for-sale inventory, which limits progress towards more home sales.”

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President Donald Trump’s proposed $5 million “gold card” for U.S. residency would be one the most expensive in the world, according to experts.
It also includes a tax loophole that would give the new-card holders a lucrative benefit not available to American citizens
Trump said gold-card holders would not be subject to taxes on their overseas income.

A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high net worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.
President Donald Trump’s proposed $5 million “gold card” for U.S. residency would be one the most expensive in the world, according to experts.

Yet it also includes a tax loophole that would give the new-card holders a lucrative benefit not available to American citizens, experts say.
Trump this week announced the creation of a new investment visa that gives the overseas wealthy permanent residency and a path to citizenship in return for $5 million. Attorneys who advise the wealthy on migration and investment visas say demand is already strong.
“The introduction of the gold card visa program represents a unique opportunity for high-net-worth individuals looking to secure U.S. residence with a pathway to citizenship,” said Dominic Volek, head of private clients at Henley & Partners. “The U.S. remains the undisputed leader in private wealth creation and accumulation.”
Volek and others who cater to the global rich say they’ve already fielded calls from clients wanting to purchase a Trump gold card. Approximately 135,000 of the world’s millionaires are projected to migrate to a new country in 2025, according to Henley. The United Arab Emirates and the U.S. typically top the list of destinations.
“I think it’s going to sell like crazy,” Trump said at his first Cabinet news conference Wednesday. “It’s a bargain.”

While the details remain unclear, the proposal would radically change the U.S. residency path for the global rich, who currently have to navigate a patchwork of programs with tight restrictions to stay in the country. It would also mark a major potential tax change for the global rich living in the U.S., carving out a new loophole for gold-card holders.
Currently, U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and green-card holders are required to pay income tax on their U.S. earnings as well as any income they earn overseas, including in their home country. The U.S. tax on worldwide income has traditionally made U.S. residency or citizenship far less attractive for the global rich, who have businesses spread across the world and often sheltered in tax havens.
Trump said gold-card holders would not be subject to taxes on their overseas income. The provision means that gold-card residents will be able to purchase a tax benefit not available to U.S. citizens. Advisors say they’re waiting on clearer directives, since the program could create dual classes of taxpayers among the American wealthy.
Yet the international income carve-out makes it far more attractive to the world’s ultra-wealthy.
“This would be a big departure” in tax treatment, said Laura Foote Reiff, an attorney at Greenberg Traurig who specializes in business immigration. “There are many wealthy individuals who are invested in U.S. companies or have families here that do not become permanent residents because they don’t want the tax consequences.”

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The tax loophole is one reason the government can charge a premium for the gold card. At $5 million, the program would be among the most expensive in the world. Volek said Singapore’s Global Investor Program requires an investment of 10 million Singapore dollars, or about $7.5 million. New Zealand’s most expensive program requires an investment of up to 10 million New Zealand dollars, or about $5.7 million. 
Most investment visa programs around the world cost less than $1 million, attorneys say.
About 100 countries offer some type of investment visa program, with about 60 jurisdictions actively promoting their programs, according to Henley. Roughly 30 programs dominate the $20 billion a year investment migration business, with Malta, the UAE, Portugal, Italy and several jurisdictions in the Caribbean being the most popular.
At Wednesday’s news conference, Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the U.S. gold card would replace the current investment visa program, called EB-5, which offers green cards to those who invest at least $900,000 or $1.8 million, depending on the area and project. The EB-5 program been plagued by delays and a history of fraud and abuse. The program was renewed by Congress in 2022 with major changes that required the investments to be channeled to more rural, poor areas and to infrastructure projects.
When it comes to applicants, China has been far and away the largest source of those seeking EB-5 visas, with Taiwan, Vietnam and India also ranking high. The U.S. issued just more than 12,000 EB-5 visas last year, with two-thirds going to Chinese nationals, according to the State Department. 
The wealthy Chinese are also the dominant users of investment visa programs around the world, including in Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
While Trump said the U.S. could sell a million gold cards, attorneys say the likely demand is a fraction of that total – perhaps thousands but not hundreds of thousands. There are about 424,000 people in the world worth $30 million or more, with 148,000 of them in the U.S., leaving about 277,000 overseas ultra-wealthy who could reasonably afford the program.
Yet only a small fraction of them would likely apply to live in the U.S., immigration attorneys say. Last year, the U.S. had a net inflow of about 3,800 millionaires according to Henley.
“Hundreds of thousands sounds high,” Foote Reiff said. “There may be businesses that would pay to bring in top talent, like research scientists that they want to bring here and not be subject to quotas.”
One big draw of the new program is tax benefits. Historically, permanent residents in the U.S. have to pay income tax on their U.S. earnings as well as any income they earn overseas, including in their home country. The U.S. tax on worldwide income makes it far less attractive for the global rich who have businesses spread across the world and often sheltered in tax havens.
Trump said he expects the biggest demand will be from companies (especially in tech, like Apple) seeking to hire top college graduates in the U.S. who come from India, China or other countries but can’t get proper visas.

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