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Ticketmaster is gearing up for what’s expected to be high demand for tickets to Beyoncé’s upcoming “Renaissance World Tour.”
Ticketing for the North American leg of the 41-date tour begins Feb. 6, according to Ticketmaster and parent company Live Nation.
The ticketing site has come under fresh scrutiny in light of a botched presale for Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour that was overrun by bots.

Beyoncé performing.
Larry Busacca | PW18 | Getty Images

Ticketmaster is gearing up for what’s expected to be high demand for tickets to Beyoncé’s upcoming “Renaissance World Tour,” as the ticketing giant continues to face criticism over the botched presale for Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour last year.
Beyoncé announced Wednesday that her first solo world tour since 2016 will kick off May 10 in Stockholm, Sweden, and conclude Sept. 27 in New Orleans. The superstar will perform songs from her seventh studio album, “Renaissance,” which released over the summer and is in the running for Album of the Year at Sunday’s Grammy Awards ceremony.

Ticketmaster said in a statement that “demand for this tour is expected to be high” and that it plans to use its Verified Fan system again to prioritize tickets for those who register with the platform. The company said the multistep verification process will “ensure more tickets get into the hands of concertgoers” and will “help filter out buyers looking to resell tickets” and automated bots.
Ticketing for the North American leg of the 41-date tour begins Feb. 6, according to Ticketmaster and parent company Live Nation, and fans hoping to secure presale tickets will have a better chance if they register with Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan system.
Ticketmaster said registering does not guarantee tickets and only verified fans who later receive a code through lottery-style selection will then have access to join the sale on a first-come, first-served basis on the sale date. Registration windows vary by city, and the company warns “there will be more demand than there are tickets available.”
In November, verified fans for Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour presale faced long wait times, confusion and technical glitches. Within 48 hours of the presale going live, Ticketmaster canceled the general public sale, citing “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand.”
The company later said bots were at least partially responsible for the disruption.  

Ticketmaster and Live Nation did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment Thursday.
Following the November meltdown, Ticketmaster and Live Nation have faced fresh scrutiny over their 2010 merger, with politicians and competitors saying the ticketing site’s monopoly in the live music industry has resulted in exorbitant ticket fees and poor customer service.
Senators heard testimony on the matter Jan. 25, when lawmakers from both sides of the aisle questioned Live Nation’s chief financial officer, Joe Berchtold.
A group of Swift fans is suing Live Nation, accusing the company of “anticompetitive conduct.”

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Smart Tax Planning

Black Americans are roughly three to five times more likely to face an IRS audit than other taxpayers, according to a study.
The findings show the disparity stems from a faulty software algorithm used by the agency to pick who gets audited.
The Treasury Department said, “Equitable enforcement of our tax laws is a top priority for the administration” and Inflation Reduction Act funds will help upgrade technology and hire top talent.

Jeffrey Coolidge | Photodisc | Getty Images

Black Americans are roughly three to five times more likely to face an IRS audit than other taxpayers, according to a new study.
While there isn’t evidence of explicit discrimination from the IRS or its revenue agents, the findings show the disparity stems from a faulty software algorithm used by the agency to pick who gets audited.

Based on microdata on roughly 148 million tax returns and 780,000 audits, the study was conducted by economists at Stanford University, the University of Michigan, the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the University of Chicago.

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“Equitable enforcement of our tax laws is a top priority for the administration, and resources provided by the Inflation Reduction Act will enable the IRS to upgrade technology and hire top talent to go after wealthy tax evaders,” a Treasury Department spokesperson told CNBC in an email.

Focus on ‘low dollar, high certainty cases’

The study’s co-author, Evelyn Smith, an economics graduate student at the University of Michigan and visiting fellow at Stanford University’s RegLab, said the audit rate differences seem to be driven by the agency’s focus on “low-dollar, high-certainty cases.”
Specifically, the study examines audits of filers claiming the earned income tax credit, a tax break for low to moderate earners. The credit is refundable, meaning eligible filers can receive it even with zero taxes due.
The findings show Black filers claiming the earned income tax credit were more likely to be audited than non-Black filers claiming the same credit.

“It’s a type of audit that the IRS does a lot,” she said. “It’s cheap, it’s easy to perform and Black taxpayers get caught up in that disproportionately relative to non-Black taxpayers.”

Focusing on these individual-level issues rather than the total dollar amount of underreporting seems to be driving these differences.

Evelyn Smith
Study co-author

Smith said the IRS has focused on specific mistakes with claiming the earned income tax credit, such as missing dependents or misreporting income, which are required for eligibility.
“Focusing on these individual-level issues rather than the total dollar amount of underreporting seems to be driving these differences,” she said, noting a shift to self-employed earned income tax credit filers would help address the problem.

Cuts created ‘distorted prioritization of audits’

The study comes amid the ongoing debate over the nearly $80 billion in IRS funding, including enforcement, approved by Congress in August.  
Chuck Marr, vice president for federal tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the findings were “very troubling” and it speaks to the agency’s need for staffing. “The enforcement division has been decimated by budget cuts in the last decade,” he said. “And one result of that has been this distorted prioritization of audits.”
The IRS is expected to deliver a plan for allocation of the funding to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in February. More

Activist investor Trian sent another letter to Disney, pushing for the removal of a board member in favor of instituting Nelson Peltz, as the proxy battle between the two heats up.
Trian is pushing for votes to put Peltz on the board and remove Michael Froman, according to a Thursday filing.
Trian holds 9.4 million shares of Disney and went public with its activist campaign in early January.

Nelson Peltz
David A. Grogan | CNBC

The proxy battle between Disney and activist investment firm Trian Management LP is heating up ahead of the company’s annual shareholder meeting.
Earlier in January Trian went public with its fight for a seat on the board, taking issue with Disney’s $71 billion acquisition of Fox in 2019, board missteps in the succession planning process and losses for shareholders.

The two traded barbs on Thursday after Trian said in a filing that Disney shareholders should vote to remove Michael Froman from the board and replace him with Nelson Peltz.
“Trian Group believes Mr. Froman has no experience as a public company director outside of Disney,” the firm said in a statement Thursday. “In contrast, Nelson Peltz has served on numerous public company boards over the last several years.”
Disney’s board responded later Thursday saying Froman’s “deep background in global trade and international business” leads them to believe he is better qualified than Peltz to help drive shareholder value.
Trian is arguing that Disney shareholders have lost out in value over the years due to “weak corporate governance.” The firm said Disney lost more than $120 billion of its market value in 2022, earnings per share has declined 50% since 2018 and pointed to Disney eliminating its dividend in 2020.
Trian said it holds about 9.4 million shares valued at approximately $1 billion, which it accumulated months ago.

Disney’s board on Thursday urged shareholders not to endorse Peltz. The board said that replacing Froman with Peltz would be a mistake, saying Peltz would “threaten the strategic management of Disney during a period of important change in the media landscape.”
Last month, Disney shot back at Trian, defending CEO Bob Iger’s past acquisitions. The company also said Peltz didn’t have an understanding of Disney’s business and lacked the skills to drive shareholder value while presenting no strategy. Disney said its board was where it needed to be.
“Peltz has no track record in large cap media or tech, no solutions to offer for the evolving media landscape,” Disney said in an investor presentation released Tuesday.
In a move to preempt and oppose Trian in January, Disney said Mark Parker, the executive chairman of Nike, would become the new chairman of the board.
Froman, the vice chairman and president of strategic growth at Mastercard, has served as a director on the board since 2018. He also served as U.S. Trade Representative under then-President Barack Obama.
Few members of Disney’s board have media experience outside of the Mouse House.

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The average rate on the 30-year fixed rate mortgage has fallen to 5.99%, Mortgage News Daily said.
The rate started this week at 6.21% and fell sharply Wednesday after the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said inflation “has eased somewhat but remains elevated.”
For someone buying a $400,000 home today with a 20% down payment, the monthly payment is $293 less than it would have been in October.

Prospective buyers at an open house in Florida.
Mike Stocker | South Florida Sun Sentinel | Tribune News Service | Getty Images

The average rate on the 30-year fixed rate mortgage has fallen to 5.99%, according to Mortgage News Daily.
The housing market hasn’t seen the rate with a five handle since a brief blip in early September. Before that, it was in early August.

The rate started this week at 6.21% and fell sharply Wednesday after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said inflation “has eased somewhat but remains elevated,” which was a shift from previous language.
That sent bond yields lower, and mortgage rates loosely follow the yield on the 10-year Treasury.
“Measured steps can continue as long as the economic and inflation data is there to support them. This means rates can make progress down into the 5’s but are unlikely to stampede quickly into the 4’s,” said Matthew Graham, chief operating officer at Mortgage News Daily. “I’m not saying that won’t happen–just that it would take a bit more time than some of the rate rallies we remember from the past.”
Mortgage rates peaked in October with the 30-year fixed at 7.37% and have been sliding since then. For potential homebuyers that means savings. For a consumer purchasing a $400,000 home today with a 20% down payment, the monthly payment is $293 less than it would have been in October.
Lower rates already appear to be juicing buyer interest.

Pending home sales, which measure signed contracts on existing homes, rose in December for the first time in six months. They gained 2% compared with November, according to the National Association of Realtors. 
Stocks of the nation’s homebuilders have been on a tear since rates started to fall back and several are seeing 52-week highs Thursday. The U.S. Home Construction ETF is hitting a new one-year high, up over 3% on the day.
Homebuilder stocks are also reacting positively to earnings beats reported this week from PulteGroup and last week from the nation’s largest homebuilder, D.R. Horton. Both builders reported seeing renewed buyer interest in December, attributing that to lower mortgage rates.

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Penn Entertainment said its interactive gambling business, which includes sports betting, made a profit in the fourth quarter.
It’s tougher to turn a profit during the third and fourth quarters because sportsbooks spend more on marketing and promotions during football season.
The profit came in spite of a $10 million bet “Mattress Mack” won on the Houston Astros winning the World Series.

In this photo illustration, the Penn Entertainment logo is displayed on a smartphone mobile screen.
Rafael Henrique | SOPA Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Penn Entertainment on Thursday became the first U.S. gambling company to post a profit in its sports betting business during the final three months of a year.
Usually, it’s tougher to turn a sportsbook profit during the third and fourth quarters because companies spend more on marketing and promotions during football season.

Penn’s interactive business, which also includes online casino games, made a $5.2 million profit on $208 million in revenue during the fourth quarter of 2022. The performance helped lift the company’s overall revenue for the period by nearly 1% to $1.6 billion.
The profit in sports betting came even in spite of a highly publicized $10 million bet Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale placed – and won – on the Houston Astros winning the World Series in November.
Caesars also took a hit from Mattress Mack’s baseball bet, which blocked its own ability to turn a profit in sports betting in the fourth quarter, according to results pre-released as a result of a debt refinancing.
FanDuel, the U.S. online sports betting leader for market share, announced a quarterly profit in the second quarter last year and said it anticipated profitability for the full year. Its parent company, Flutter, has not yet announced earnings.
DraftKings, another rival, has said it will be profitable by 2024. Its shares rebounded more than 50% in January, after a punishing 2022, when investors focused on the lack of earnings in spite of massive spending on promotions and marketing.

Penn credits its profitability in the interactive segment to a marketing approach that differs from its competitors. It relies on cross-platform promotion from Barstool, a sports media company that Penn will own in full later this month, and powerhouse Canadian media brand theScore.
Penn said Ontario, where theScore was founded, has become its top market in North America for sports betting and its iCasino business, in spite of intense competition.
The company’s interactive business also experienced its most successful launch ever, based on first time deposits, when Ohio went live with sports betting Jan. 1. Penn credited the power of the Barstool brand and said more than half of the money wagered came from those within its MyChoice customer reward database.
Still shares declined Thursday, after CEO Jay Snowden, on an earnings call, blamed overall lackluster fourth quarter earnings on bad weather in December. The company issued 2023 guidance which Deutsche Bank gaming analyst Carlo Santarelli called “realistic, though likely uninspiring.”
Snowden said the guidance is conservative, based on the broader economic outlook. “We took a haircut to what we anticipated seeing in 2023, just to build in some level of recessionary concerns,” he said.
But, he added, January has been very strong for both its bricks-and-mortar casinos and the online platform. He said if the current trend continues, the midpoint of the guidance is likely turn out to be low.

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Patriots owner Robert Kraft says he would give Tom Brady a one-day contract so he could retire with the New England Patriots.
Brady has said he’s retiring from the NFL “for good” this time.
The Patriots drafted Brady in the sixth round in 2000. He won six Super Bowls with them.

Tom Brady #12 of the New England Patriots celebrates with team owner Robert Kraft after defeating the Seattle Seahawks 28-24 during Super Bowl XLIX at University of Phoenix Stadium on February 1, 2015 in Glendale, Arizona.
Tom Pennington | Getty Images

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft wants Tom Brady to re-sign with the team for one day so that he can officially end his legendary career with the franchise that drafted him 23 years ago.
“We will do everything in our power to bring him back, have him sign off as a Patriot,” Kraft said in an interview with CNN on Thursday.

Brady, widely considered the greatest quarterback in National Football League history, announced his retirement Wednesday after 23 seasons. He had previously said he would retire last year, but went on to play one more season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
This time, Brady said in a video posted to Twitter that his retirement would be “for good.” The seven-time Super Bowl champion is going out after the first losing season in his record-breaking career.
“Not only do I want it, our fans are clamoring for it,” Kraft said. “To us, he is always has been and always will be a Patriot.
A representative for Brady didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The 45-year-old Brady started his NFL career in 2000 as a sixth-round draft pick with the Patriots. He ended up leading them to six Super Bowl titles while playing for them until 2019. He left for the Buccaneers in 2020 and won a seventh title.
Last year, when Brady retired for the first time, he thanked the Buccaneers and their head coach at the time, Bruce Arians, but not the Patriots or coach Bill Belichick. Eventually, he tweeted: “Thank you, Patriots Nation. “I’m beyond grateful. Love you all.”

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The Bank of England governor on Thursday talked down expectations that it is readying to pause or pivot rate hikes, noting that there is still some way to go in taming inflation.
Andrew Bailey told CNBC that the omission of the word “forcefully” from its forward guidance was not a sign that “we’re done.”
The Bank on Thursday voted 7-2 in favor of a second consecutive half-point rate hike, increasing the main Bank rate to a 14-year high of 4%.

Governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey has talked down expectations that the central bank is readying to pause or pivot rate hikes.
Yui Mok | Afp | Getty Images

LONDON — The Bank of England on Thursday talked down expectations that it is readying to pause or pivot rate hikes, noting that there is still some way to go in its efforts to tame inflation.
Governor Andrew Bailey told CNBC that the omission of the word “forcefully” from its forward guidance at Thursday’s Monetary Policy Committee meeting was not a sign that “we’re done” despite seeing an encouraging downward trend in price growth.

“I’m not saying that this is it, we’re done, because the world is too uncertain at the moment,” he told CNBC’s Joumanna Bercetche.
The Bank on Thursday voted 7-2 in favor of a second consecutive half-point rate hike, increasing the main Bank rate to a 14-year high of 4%.

At the same time, it also revised up its economic forecast for the year, predicting a shorter and shallower recession than previously anticipated.
Sterling fell against the dollar and gilt yields tumbled in afternoon trade on speculation that the Bank may be nearing the end of its hiking cycle.

‘An encouraging downward path’

Bailey said there were “a number of reasons” to be more optimistic in its growth forecast, including falling energy prices, a lower market curve of interest rates, and an easing unemployment forecast. However, he cautioned markets against becoming complacent.

“There is an encouraging downward path of inflation in our central projection, but there’s a big risk,” Bailey noted. “We’ve got the biggest risk in our forecast on inflation on the upside than we’ve ever had.”
“We’ve raised interest rates now substantially in the last 12 months or just over 12 months,” he added. “We expect quite a bit of the effect of that is still to come through, so we want to see the evidence of that.”
U.K. inflation came in at 10.5% in December, down slightly from the 10.7% of November. However, the International Monetary Fund on Monday downgraded its projection for U.K. GDP growth in 2023 to -0.6%, making it the world’s worst performing major economy, behind even Russia.

The U.K. central bank, for its part, expects the economy to shrink 0.5% this year, and upward revision of the 1.5% contraction predicted in December. It then sees the economy declining by a further 0.25% in 2024, compared with the 0.9% uptick forecast by the IMF.
The Bank of England’s rate hike follows similar moves by other major central banks this week as policymakers continue their efforts to quell still high inflation.
The European Central Bank voted earlier Thursday to raise rates by 50 basis points and the U.S. Federal Reserve moved Wednesday to increase rates by 25 basis points.
However, Bailey insisted that the Bank’s policy decisions would not be influenced by those of other central banks.
“We do not coordinate monetary policy in that sense across central banks because we’re each setting monetary policy for our particular setting,” he said. “We have to set interest rates for the U.K.”

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Ford Motor’s new U.S. vehicle sales started 2023 on a stronger footing than a year earlier but were down 18.4% from December.
The uptick was led by sales increases for F-Series pickups, Bronco Sport SUVs and EVs.
The Detroit automaker reports fourth-quarter earnings Thursday after the bell.

Ford workers produce the electric F-150 Lightning pickup on Dec. 13, 2022 at the automaker’s Ford Rouge Electric Vehicle Center (REVC).
Michael Wayland | CNBC

DETROIT — Ford Motor’s new U.S. vehicle sales started 2023 on a stronger footing than a year earlier but were down 18.4% from December, the company reported Thursday.
January is historically one of the weakest months of the year, while December is one of the strongest. Still, the month-over-month decline is notable as the worst for the automaker since a 28% drop between May and June of last year. Between December 2021 and January 2022, sales declined 17.4%.

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The automotive industry continues to navigate through some supply chain and production issues, although the flow of parts and vehicle production this year is expected to be more consistent than in recent years. Morgan Stanley said Thursday that U.S. auto sales last month smashed expectations: It estimated the seasonally adjusted selling rate at 16.2 million compared with expectations of 15.5 million.
For January, Ford reported a 2% increase in sales from a year earlier to 146,356 vehicles sold. The uptick was led by sales increases of 8.8% for F-Series pickups, 25.5% for Broncos, and 52% for Bronco Sport SUVs — as well as a doubling of its electric vehicle sales, which have been and remain minimal. EVs made up 3.6% of Ford’s monthly sales.
Some of the automaker’s crossovers such as the Ford Edge and Escape experienced double-digit declines from a year earlier.

Stock comparison between Ford, General Motors and Tesla.

“We are pleased with the strong sales start to the year with our gains being driven by record electric vehicle sales, F-Series trucks and Broncos,” Ford spokesman Said Depp said in an email to CNBC.
Ford’s EV sales — a major focus of Wall Street — increased to 5,247 units in January, led by a roughly 11% increase in sales of its electric Mustang Mach-E crossover. The automaker sold 2,264 units of its electric F-150 Lightning pickup in January.

On Monday, Ford announced it was increasing production and cutting prices of the Mach-E, weeks after industry leader Tesla announced similar plans for its EVs.
The Mach-E led Ford to become the second-bestselling automaker of EVs last year in the U.S., albeit trailing Tesla by a wide margin. Ford sold more than 65,000 EVs in the U.S. last year. Motor Intelligence estimates Tesla, which does not report sales by region, sold more than 522,000 EVs in the U.S. in 2022.
Ford’s January sales come ahead of the automaker releasing fourth-quarter and 2022 earnings results Thursday after markets close. In October, Ford confirmed its prior full-year guidance of adjusted earnings before interest and taxes of between $11.5 billion and $12.5 billion.
— CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed to this report.

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