Welcome to the next edition of On The Record, thoughtful analysis on culture, entertainment, tech, fashion, music, sport, and brands. Here's a round-up of key conversations and campaigns that caught my attention this week.
Audiences have never been easier to reach or harder to meet, and this week shows who collects the toll in between. In UK live music, Live Nation companies promoted 290 of the 385 outdoor concerts on AIF's tracker and, by Which?'s count, took 53% of 2025 ticket value, so a brand sponsoring a summer of gigs is mostly negotiating access to one group's audience, often under a regional promoter's name. The NFL is fighting prediction markets at the Supreme Court over a related principle: the game belongs to the league, but platforms it has no deal with traded $1.8bn on its games on the opening Sunday of the season. McDonald's ending a 32-year FIFA partnership after its biggest World Cup campaign underperformed, and Netflix cutting its ad forecast to $2.7bn while hiring Steve Wilson to buy podcasts, come from the same calculation, with rights holders and their partners asking which hours of fan attention they actually get paid for. Gymshark's answer is to give its community a room with its name over the door, signing Megan Thee Stallion as its first celebrity ambassador and setting January 2027 for its first gym. Meanwhile the BBE Store's licence review in Hackney shows that the venues developing the next generation of acts sit almost entirely outside the economics the rest of this edition describes. RAYE winning the Mercury with an independently released album is a reminder that the one route nobody has consolidated is a jury of people with taste. For any brand leader, the question worth asking of every partnership this week is who stands between them and the fan, and what that position costs.
🏟️ SPORT, POWER & GOVERNANCE
NFL Forces Saquon Barkley to Sell His Polymarket Stake as It Asks the Supreme Court to Let States Regulate Prediction Markets 🏈
📌 While every other major US league is signing prediction-market partners, the NFL is fighting them on every front. Eagles running back Saquon Barkley told Front Office Sports last week that he had to sell his equity in Polymarket because league rules bar players from investing in or endorsing prediction-market companies. The NFL confirmed the ban on 28 October. Earlier in the month, the league filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to hear New Jersey's case against Kalshi. It argues that sports event contracts are gambling and belong under state law, outside the swaps rules of the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
NFL-related contracts made up $1.8bn of the $3.3bn traded on prediction markets on the first Sunday of the 2026 season, according to the league's brief
MLB, the NHL and the NBA have all signed prediction-market partners and memorandums of understanding with the CFTC
Polymarket is reportedly paying LeBron James $15m a year for an endorsement focused on football rather than basketball
💡 The NFL's position is more consistent than it first looks. It treats prediction markets as gambling for its players, in its advertising and now in court, and state gambling law already covers its integrity rules, the over-21 age limit most states set for betting, and its official sportsbook partners such as DraftKings and FanDuel. The integrity case is real. The league says it asked the CFTC and Kalshi to drop contracts on injuries, officiating and plays a single person could fix, and they declined. But Polymarket's headline athlete signing this autumn is a basketball player paid to promote football, which shows how little a player ban does to keep this money away from the NFL's product. It leaves the players on the field as the only people in the chain shut out of it. ⚖️
McDonald's Ends Its 32-Year FIFA World Cup Sponsorship After Its Biggest Campaign Underperformed 🍟
📌 One of FIFA's longest-standing sponsors is walking away straight after the tournament it spent most on. McDonald's will end its FIFA partnership when the current agreement expires at the end of 2026, closing a relationship that began at the 1994 World Cup in the United States. Adweek reported the decision and FIFA confirmed it. The 2026 campaign, created by Wieden+Kennedy New York, ran in more than 110 countries and was the company's largest marketing push of the year. On the second-quarter earnings call, chief financial officer Ian Borden said it "underperformed versus our expectations".
The partnership began with the 1994 World Cup and was last renewed in 2023, covering the 2023 Women's World Cup and the 2026 men's tournament
The 2026 campaign ran in more than 110 countries and was McDonald's biggest World Cup campaign and its largest marketing push of 2026
FIFA said in July it had exceeded $15bn in revenue, against an $11bn projection
💡 McDonald's has named the problem itself: it now groups the World Cup with Minecraft and the Grinch as borrowed equity, meaning attention that fades once the licence runs out. That's a significant admission from the company whose Happy Meal tie-ins made licensed characters a fixture of fast-food marketing, and the review covers its whole calendar of tie-ins. The World Cup delivers huge reach for a few weeks every four years, but a restaurant chain needs reasons to visit every week. The party with the most to think about is FIFA. It loses a sponsor that had been there since 1994, straight after a tournament in McDonald's home market, in the same month it opened bidding for its 2030 US media rights. 🍔
FIFA Opens Bidding for US Rights to the 2030 World Cup, With 2034 as an Option ⚽
📌 A home tournament that broke every American soccer audience record has become the sales pitch. FIFA has opened its first US World Cup media rights tender since 2011. Bids for the 2030 men's tournament in Spain, Portugal and Morocco are due by noon on 19 November, with an option to add 2034 in Saudi Arabia, and FIFA expects to pick a winner by the end of the year. It says it will consider single bidders, joint bids, and separate linear and streaming deals. CNBC has reported interest from YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, Disney and incumbent Fox.
The 2026 World Cup averaged 13.5m US viewers per match across linear and streaming, up 166% on 2022, according to FIFA
Media executives have suggested the next US cycle could cost $1.5bn to $2bn
Netflix already holds US rights to the 2027 and 2031 Women's World Cups and has the 2030 men's tournament in Spain and Andorra
💡 The number FIFA is selling was set in American time zones. The 2026 tournament was played in North American afternoons and evenings, and US coverage named those late-afternoon and primetime kick-offs as a big driver of the jump. 2030 moves to Europe and North Africa, and 2034 moves to Riyadh, seven hours ahead of New York. Offering 2034 as an option on 2030 lets FIFA attach the tournament with the harder time zone to an easier one while the 2026 record is still fresh, and a year-end deadline keeps the auction inside that window. The bidder best placed to handle awkward kick-off times is a streamer already assembling a global World Cup presence, so Netflix holding the host-nation rights in Spain matters more than its lack of a US men's World Cup track record. 📺
Harry Kane and Alexia Putellas Win the 2026 Ballon d'Or at the First Ceremony Held Outside Paris 🏆
📌 The 70th Ballon d'Or left Paris for the first time, holding its ceremony at the London Palladium on Monday 26 October in honour of the first winner, Stanley Matthews. Harry Kane became the first Englishman to win since Michael Owen in 2001, after a 73-goal season for Bayern Munich and England that included a domestic double. Alexia Putellas won the women's award for a record-equalling third time. She won it for a quadruple-winning final season at Barcelona, but she now plays for London City Lionesses, which makes her the first player from a WSL club to take the prize.
Kane scored 73 goals for club and country in 2025-26 and is the first Bayern Munich player to win since Karl-Heinz Rummenigge in 1981
Putellas equals Aitana Bonmati's record of three Women's Ballon d'Or wins, adding to her titles in 2021 and 2022
London City Lionesses finished sixth in their first WSL season and signed Putellas on 8 July 2026
💡 Barcelona earned the women's award, but its commercial value now lands in east London. Michele Kang's London City is an independent club with no men's team, and it now has the reigning Ballon d'Or winner in a league where every other side shares a badge with a men's club. Kang's group also owns OL Lyonnes, whose Melchie Dumornay finished fourth, so a multi-club owner built entirely around women's football now has two of the world's top four players. Women's clubs that sit inside men's clubs compete for budget with the men's side. Kang's clubs answer only to the women's game, and in the space of one transfer window that model has signed the best player in the world. 🏆
FIFA Names the US as Host of the First Women's Club World Cup, From 5 to 30 January 2028 🗓️
📌 The newest tournament in women's football has been scheduled around everyone's calendar except the domestic leagues'. FIFA confirmed on 22 October that the United States will stage the first Women's Club World Cup, with 19 clubs from six confederations playing from 5 to 30 January 2028. Arsenal, Barcelona and NWSL leaders Gotham FC are among the first seven qualifiers. FIFA pushed the event back from 2026 so it sits between the 2027 Women's World Cup and the Los Angeles Olympics. England's Women's Super League has warned that January dates could be "catastrophic" for its season and says it wasn't consulted.
19 clubs will take part: six from UEFA, three each from Concacaf, CONMEBOL, the AFC and CAF, and one from Oceania
January falls in the NWSL off-season and the Women's Champions League winter break, but in the middle of the WSL season
Each nation at the 2027 Women's World Cup will get $2.5m in preparation money, the same amount as teams at the 2026 men's tournament
💡 The players carry the heaviest share of this calendar. Anyone at an elite club who also plays international football faces the Women's World Cup in Brazil in summer 2027, this tournament in January 2028 and the Olympics in Los Angeles that July: three major tournaments in about 13 months. The window suits the host, whose league will be in its off-season, and FIFA, which gets a clear slot between its own events. The WSL takes a mid-season break it says it was never consulted about. Read it next to the Ballon d'Or entry: the best player in the world now plays in the WSL, and her club, London City, is not among the qualifiers so far. 🗓️
London City Lionesses Host a Pints & Ponytails Session to Get Dads Behind Their Daughters' Sport ⚽
📌 The dads' group that went viral for teaching fathers to braid hair in a pub has turned to why girls stop playing sport. Pints & Ponytails, run by Secret Life of Dads podcasters Mathew Lewis-Carter and Lawrence Price, held a session with WSL club London City Lionesses on 19 October. For the first time, daughters came too. The organisers framed it around body image and stereotypes, which research from the charity Women in Sport links to girls falling out of love with sport in their teens.
43% of girls who saw themselves as sporty at primary school disengage in their teens, against 24% of boys
31% of girls say they feel encouraged and supported by their dads to be active, against 50% of boys
The first Pints & Ponytails session sold out in under 50 minutes, and the second drew 35 dads
💡 The most useful number here is the one about dads. Women in Sport found girls and boys feel equally backed by their mums, but girls are far less likely than boys to feel encouraged by their fathers, so part of the drop-off happens at home. London City reached those dads through a group they joined to learn to braid hair. That speaks to men as parents first and football fans second, a route into women's football that most club marketing never tries. It's the same independent, women-only club that signed the world's best player in July, as covered in the Ballon d'Or entry, and here it's growing its next generation of supporters from the kitchen table outwards. 👪
🎶 MUSIC, LIVE & CULTURE
MPs Press the CMA Again to Investigate Live Nation's Hold on UK Live Music Before the End of 2026 🎟️
📌 Five months after recommending a full market investigation into UK live music, MPs are still waiting for the regulator to start one. The Business, Innovation, Science and Trade Committee said on 18 October that it is writing to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) for a timeline. Its May report found concerns about Live Nation against all three of the CMA's tests for market dominance, and said a "climate of fear" had led many witnesses to give evidence anonymously. The CMA says it is giving "active and careful consideration" to market work, the same line it used in July. Live Nation has said the report relied on inaccurate data and unsupported conclusions.
Live Nation or one of its subsidiaries promoted shows making up 53% of the total value of UK tickets sold in 2025, against 23% for the next-largest promoter, SJM
Of the 385 UK outdoor concerts AIF tracked this summer, 290 were promoted by Live Nation companies, including 194 by Cuffe & Taylor alone
As of March, only 30% of tickets sold for 2026 shows supported the voluntary £1 grassroots levy, and the committee said low take-up was widely blamed on Live Nation, though it noted Live Nation artists including Coldplay and Harry Styles have contributed
💡 Much of Live Nation's reach in UK live music is easy to miss, because it doesn't carry the Live Nation name. Half the outdoor shows on AIF's list this summer were promoted by Cuffe & Taylor, an independent promoter in which Live Nation bought a controlling stake in 2017. Others ran under Festival Republic, DF Concerts, Louder, Metropolis and Cream, so a fan at Lincoln Castle or the Piece Hall sees a regional promoter rather than a multinational. Keeping acquired brand names alive is good marketing. It's also why the group's scale is so hard for fans, artists and regulators to see without the data only an investigation can force out. While the CMA keeps the question under "careful consideration", campaigners on one side and Live Nation on the other are doing the counting, and grassroots venues like BBE Store are the ones paying while the regulator decides. 🎶
Hackney Record Shop and Venue BBE Store Faces a Licence Review After Noise Complaints From New Neighbours 💿
📌 A venue that was there before the flats now has to defend its right to keep operating. BBE Store, the record shop and free-entry events space run since 2016 from a railway arch on Helmsley Place by the Black music label BBE, has received notice of an application to review its premises licence on public nuisance and crime and disorder grounds. The store says the complaints come from a residential building that opened opposite after the pandemic, and that it has already installed noise limiters and acoustic curtains. Hackney Council says it has taken no steps to close the venue and must review any licence when an application is made.
The Save the BBE Store petition had close to 13,500 signatures by 26 October
BBE is trying to raise £20,000 to pay lawyers and planning consultants
More than 2,500 written representations were sent to Hackney's Licensing Sub-Committee in under a week, according to the Night Time Industries Association, which is campaigning for the store
💡 The rule meant to protect venues like this one doesn't reach the decision that matters here. The Agent of Change principle, in national planning policy since 2018, puts the cost of noise mitigation on whoever builds next to an existing venue. But it sits in planning, and a licence review under the Licensing Act can still restrict or revoke a venue's licence once new residents have moved in. Because of that gap, an established business can do everything asked of it, from noise limiters to acoustic curtains, and still need £20,000 for lawyers to defend a licence it already holds. Grassroots spaces like BBE are where artists, DJs and audiences grow before any arena date, so every one lost is a supply-chain problem for the wider music industry. 🎶
RAYE Wins the 2026 Mercury Prize With Her Independently Released Album This Music May Contain Hope 🏆
📌 Five years after publicly leaving a major-label deal because, by her account, she wasn't being allowed to release an album, RAYE has won the UK and Ireland's album prize. Her second record, This Music May Contain Hope, released independently in March through Human Re Sources, took the Mercury Prize at Newcastle's Utilita Arena on Thursday 22 October. It beat 11 other shortlisted acts, including Olivia Dean and Paul McCartney. In her speech she spoke about coming from a system built around singles.
The prize carries £25,000, and RAYE is the first female solo winner since Little Simz in 2022
This Music May Contain Hope reached Number 1 on the UK albums chart
RAYE set a record with six wins at the 2024 BRIT Awards
💡 RAYE has won the top prize for the one format she says her old label wouldn't let her release. She left that deal in 2021, released both her albums independently, and the second has now topped the UK chart and won the Mercury. That shows how much of a career an artist can now sustain without a major label behind her. Read it next to the Goldman entry, where the bank is bullish on music but more cautious about labels: RAYE is the clearest British example of an artist taking that upside directly. Her line about singles is aimed at the streaming era's habit of judging artists track by track, and a long-form album winning the biggest album prize in the UK and Ireland makes a commercial case as well as an artistic one. 🎤
Goldman Sachs Raises Its Music Forecast for the First Time Since 2022, to $198bn by 2035 📈
📌 After three years of cuts, the bank's annual music forecast is going up again. Goldman Sachs' tenth Music in the Air report, published on 15 October, expects recorded music, publishing and live combined to grow 5.8% a year to $198.1bn by 2035, with recorded music alone reaching $56.1bn. The growth depends on higher subscription prices, emerging markets, direct-to-fan sales and live events, since subscriber numbers in mature markets are levelling off. Goldman is noticeably more cautious about the record labels than about the industry as a whole.
Recorded music is forecast to grow 5.9% a year to $56.1bn by 2035, up from about $31.7bn in 2025
Subscription streaming revenue to rightsholders is forecast to grow fastest, at 7.1% a year to 2035
AI licensing, creation tools and new monetisation could add around 10% to recorded music revenue by 2035, though Goldman warns AI-generated tracks could dilute the royalty pool
💡 The forecast is bullish on music and measured on the companies that own it, and that gap is the story. Most of the growth Goldman models comes from charging existing listeners more, through price rises, superfan products and live, which favours the businesses closest to the fan when the money changes hands: distributors and promoters more than rights owners. AI cuts both ways for rights owners, adding licensing revenue while filling the same royalty pool with tracks that take a share of every stream. The artists in this edition with their own route to the fan, from RAYE's independent releases to SKYLRK in Seoul and Jay-Z's stadium anniversary run, are the ones best placed for the decade Goldman describes. 🎼
BookMyShow Live Survey Finds 44% of Indian Concertgoers Attend Shows to Feel "Emotionally Healed" 🎤
📌 The ticketing platform that also promotes many of India's biggest shows has published its own reading of why Indians buy concert tickets, and it's an emotional one. BookMyShow Live's OOO: Offline. Outdoors. Out Loud report surveyed nearly 1,700 concertgoers in 75 cities over five weeks from 10 June 2026. The season covered included Post Malone, Travis Scott's India debut and Lollapalooza India. The survey found that 44% go to shows to feel emotionally healed, rising to 49% of millennials, while only 4% cite FOMO, and 39% say they now choose experiences over possessions.
72% of respondents said they discovered a new artist at a BookMyShow Live event during the season
For every ₹100 spent on tickets to Post Malone's Guwahati concert in December 2025, attendees spent a further ₹899 on travel, accommodation, food and local businesses, and 53% travelled in from more than 200 cities and towns
Respondents were 57% aged 18-29 and 65% male
💡 The most useful figure sits further down the report than the headline. More than half the crowd at a Post Malone show in Guwahati came from outside the city, and BookMyShow estimates they spent nine rupees locally for every one spent on a ticket. That's the evidence for India's live growth moving beyond the big metros. The emotional findings need more care, because the company that sold the tickets and ran many of the shows also asked the questions. A sample that is 57% under 30 and 65% male describes its own core customer more than India's concert audience. The data is still useful, and it doubles as a positioning document, with BookMyShow presenting itself as the authority on why India goes to gigs as well as the place it buys the ticket. It fits Goldman's view of live as one of media's strongest growth stories, and in India the company best placed to capture that growth is the one writing the research. 🎟️
Jay-Z Will Headline the Apple Music Super Bowl LXI Halftime Show 🎤
📌 Seven years after Roc Nation became the NFL's live entertainment strategist, and after Jay-Z said in 2019 that he'd walk away if the deal was about him performing, the curator has put himself on the bill. The NFL, Apple Music and Roc Nation confirmed on Monday 26 October, during halftime of the Cowboys-Eagles game, that Jay-Z will headline Super Bowl LXI at SoFi Stadium on 14 February 2027. Puck had reported the booking days earlier. Roc Nation will executive produce, Hamish Hamilton will direct, and the game will be ESPN's first live Super Bowl.
Roc Nation has advised the NFL on halftime performers and helped produce the show since 2019
Jay-Z's anniversary run for Reasonable Doubt and The Blueprint included three sold-out nights at Yankee Stadium, sold-out shows in London and Paris, and two shows at SoFi Stadium on 23 and 24 October
Last year's Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show, headlined by Bad Bunny, won seven Emmys, the most of any halftime show
💡 Goodell's one request in 2019 was that Jay-Z would perform one day, and the timing he chose makes the halftime show the final date of a catalogue campaign. The anniversary run put two of his defining albums back in front of stadium crowds in New York, London, Paris and Los Angeles. The Super Bowl brings that cycle to the year's most-watched musical performance, in the same stadium he played the weekend before the announcement. Apple Music is best placed of anyone in the deal to turn that into listening, because its Road to Halftime programming runs exclusive content and season-long features around the headliner for months before kick-off. Roc Nation has spent seven years turning the halftime show into a property it shapes from booking to broadcast, and putting its founder on that stage shows how much of the property it now controls. 🏟️
U2 Will Headline Halftime at the NFL's First Thanksgiving Eve Game, Live on Netflix 🦃
📌 The NFL has added a new night to its calendar, and Netflix is putting a stadium act at its centre. U2 will play halftime at the league's first Thanksgiving Eve game, Packers at Rams at SoFi Stadium on Wednesday 25 November. It marks the band's 50th anniversary and its first NFL halftime show since Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002. The game streams in more than 200 countries and is included in every Netflix plan, and Jesse Collins Entertainment is producing the show.
It's the first regular-season NFL game scheduled for the night before Thanksgiving, kicking off at 8pm ET
Netflix's earlier NFL holiday halftime headliners were Beyonce in 2024 and Snoop Dogg in 2025
The game is available in over 200 countries and in five languages
💡 A closed league makes its own scarcity, and a game on a night that has never had one is inventory created from nothing. Netflix gets a second holiday fixture alongside its Christmas Day games, and with U2 marking 50 years it reaches a different generation from its last two headliners. This links straight to the Netflix earnings entry: live NFL is exactly the kind of high-value viewing the ad business needs, and a halftime act of this size gives advertisers a reason to pay a premium for it. Less than three months later the same stadium hosts Jay-Z's Super Bowl show, so SoFi stages two of the NFL's biggest music nights in one season. 🏈
Justin Bieber's SKYLRK Opens Its First Korean Pop-Up in Seoul, Built Around Its First Audio Product 🔊
📌 Having sold his catalogue interests in 2023, Justin Bieber is now making the hardware music plays through. His brand SKYLRK ran its first Korean pop-up in Seoul's Seongsu-dong from 22 to 25 October. At its centre was a listening installation he conceived around SKYLRK AUDIO speakers, alongside Seoul-only apparel and a preview of an upcoming STIGA table tennis collaboration. Bieber came in person, on his first trip to South Korea in around 13 years.
Seoul is SKYLRK's fourth physical space, after Tokyo, Indio and New York
Visitors began queuing around nine hours before the 10am opening on day one
The DOMO speaker, the brand's first audio product, was sold in limited quantities at the pop-up
💡 Bieber sold his catalogue interests for a reported $200m in 2023, and he's now putting his name on the speaker and the room. For an artist in that position the logic holds: the catalogue pays whoever bought it every time a song streams, while hardware, apparel and limited drops pay him directly. No other retailer can sell a Seoul-only hoodie with the street address printed on it, and a nine-hour queue on day one is a strong demand signal for a brand launching its first hardware. Set this beside the $5m in SKYLRK merch he sold at Coachella, which On The Record covered in April. Each appearance is becoming a destination, with the music as the reason to turn up and the product as the part he keeps. 🎧
Bose Buys Skullcandy and Keeps It as a Separate Brand 🎧
📌 A licensing partnership has turned into an acquisition. Bose announced on 21 October that it has bought Skullcandy, the Park City lifestyle audio brand whose recent earbuds and headphones already carried licensed Sound by Bose technology. Skullcandy will run as a separate brand within Bose's Premium Consumer Audio business, keeping its Utah base and its athlete relationships. Bose says the attraction is a younger audience across action sports, music and gaming that its own brand has struggled to reach.
Bose bought Skullcandy from a fund managed by Mill Road Capital Management, and financial terms were not disclosed
Skullcandy's Crusher 1080 ANC headphones, priced at $279.99, combine its own sensory bass system with Bose noise cancellation and spatial audio
The deal follows Bose's 2024 acquisition of high-end audio brands McIntosh and Sonus faber
💡 Bose already had its technology inside Skullcandy's best products through a licence, so this deal buys what a licence can't: boardsports athletes, a gaming and music crowd, and a brand younger buyers choose for reasons other than noise cancellation. Bose now runs a ladder of audio brands, with McIntosh and Sonus faber above its own name and Skullcandy below it, each speaking to a different listener. That's a more credible way into youth culture than stretching the Bose name to fit. The risk is in the engineering integration. Skullcandy sells on colour, attitude and price, and products that start to look and sound like small Bose models would waste the one asset this deal paid for. Compare SKYLRK: Bieber is making audio hardware for a fanbase he already has, while Bose bought a fanbase to put its hardware in. 🔊
🛍️ BRAND, CULTURE & CAMPAIGNS
Gymshark Signs Megan Thee Stallion as Its First Celebrity Ambassador and Sets January 2027 for Its First Gym 🏋️
📌 After 14 years built on lifters and fitness creators, Gymshark is changing two things at once. On 13 October it named Megan Thee Stallion its first celebrity ambassador in a multi-year deal. She fronts a campaign called Megan Does Gym, training alongside women from Gymshark's own community. The brand has also confirmed that its first public gym, the Lifting Club in Miami's Wynwood, will open in January 2027, after originally aiming for this summer. Both moves come as growth slows: revenue rose 6.4% to a record £646m in the year to July 2025, while pre-tax profit fell to £6.9m.
Revenue rose to £646m in the year to July 2025, up from £607.3m, while pre-tax profit fell to £6.9m from £11.8m
Founder Ben Francis is reported to be negotiating to buy back part of the 21% stake sold to private equity firm General Atlantic in 2020
Gymshark chose Wynwood after its LIFT events in Miami drew more than 20,000 people
💡 The two firsts tackle the same problem from opposite ends. A celebrity brings the kind of reach the creator model no longer delivers at its old pace, while a gym deepens the relationship with people already inside the community. Gymshark has shaped the first to protect the second. The campaign sits under its existing We Do Gym platform, Megan trains alongside women from the community, and the product on offer is her picks from the current range. That's the careful version of a first celebrity deal, and her audience gives the brand reach beyond its lifting core, particularly in the US. The test is execution. The gym, the operationally hard part, has already slipped six months, and the ambassador deal only pays off if new customers find a brand that still feels like it belongs to lifters. 💪
On's Entry Into Football Puts Product Development in Public, With Mbappé Playing in Prototype Boots ⚽
📌 A brand with no football history is developing its first boot in front of the people it wants to sell it to. Since announcing its move into football on 18 September, On has put Kylian Mbappé into prototype LightSpray boots in competitive matches. Mbappé left Nike after roughly two decades and took an equity stake in the Swiss company. Director of Football Thierry Henry has also posted his own test pairs on Instagram. The first boots go on sale in 2027, and Barcelona midfielder Sydney Schertenleib is helping develop the product with a focus on the women's game.
On formally entered football on 18 September 2026, and Mbappé's deal combines cash and company shares
Henry has worked on the project since late 2025
Schertenleib, who first signed with On in December 2025 as a training and lifestyle ambassador, has kept wearing adidas Predator boots in matches
💡 Equity changes the relationship. A fee buys Mbappé's face for the length of a contract. Shares give him a reason to care whether the boot works in 2030, which is why On can put an unfinished product on his feet in internationals without it reading as a stunt. Showing prototypes in public turns the usual years of secrecy into years of content. And because the women's game is in the development brief from the start, through Schertenleib, one story reaches two football audiences. It's a rare case of a brand building standing in a sport where it has none. The real test comes in 2027, when the measure becomes whether players who aren't paid to wear the boot choose it anyway. 👟
(Analysis: SportsVerse)
Kathryn Turner, M&S Food's Director of Product Development, Has Built a 246,000-Follower TikTok Audience Since May 🍪
📌 One of the most-watched voices for M&S Food this year is the employee who signs off the products. Kathryn Turner, a 27-year M&S veteran who runs product development for the food business, started posting on TikTok in mid-May. Her videos take followers through new lines, farm visits and the thinking behind the products she approves. She passed 50,000 followers within a month, and fans now make their own videos built around her picks.
Turner started posting in mid-May 2026 and reached nearly 50,000 followers within a month
She now has more than 246,000 followers on TikTok and 161,000 on Instagram
Ash Jones, founder of influencer agency Great Influence, estimates that buying the reach of her first 34 posts, close to 20m views, from an external food creator would cost M&S £150,000 to £300,000
💡 That valuation measures the risk as well as the reward. Jones prices Turner's reach as media, but what sits underneath it is her authority as the person who signs the product off, and that authority belongs to her personally. Her followers chose her. The last time her role changed hands, her predecessor, April Preston, left to become global product director at Holland & Barrett. Every brand investing in employee content is creating stars whose audiences can leave with them. The programmes that last will reward those people properly and spread the voice across a team. M&S already has the structure for that: every one of its 600 stores runs its own TikTok account. 🛒
(Analysis: Ash Jones, Great Influence)
Prada's "Drawing Prada" Holiday 2026 Campaign Puts Its Cast Inside Hand-Drawn Animation ✏️
📌 As AI-generated imagery spreads through advertising, a luxury house has paid for every frame to be drawn by hand. Prada released its Holiday 2026 campaign, Drawing Prada, on Tuesday 27 October. It places Sadie Sink, Maya Hawke, Chen Haoyu, Luther Ford and Kelvin Harrison Jr. inside illustrated winter scenes created by a team led by veteran animator John Pomeroy. Glen Luchford shot the live action, matching his light and perspective to the drawings so the actors and the animated animals appear to share the same space.
Pomeroy's credits include An American Tail, The Land Before Time, Pocahontas and Fantasia 2000
The campaign runs as stills and a series of short 2D animated films
Creative direction is by Ferdinando Verderi, under creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons
💡 Prada is selling the time it took. Luxury's central claim is that something was made slowly by skilled hands, and a holiday campaign drawn frame by frame by a Disney-trained animator turns that claim into the advertising itself. It lands just as generated imagery is spreading through the industry. Coca-Cola's AI-made holiday ads drew public criticism two years running, and Prada has taken the opposite position by making the craft the subject, down to billing the campaign as animated by hand. Set it beside Tiffany's Cianfrance film in this edition: both luxury holiday campaigns here are built on visible human work. 🎨
Tiffany & Co. Names Amanda Seyfried as House Ambassador for Its "Love Is a Gift" Holiday Campaign 💎
📌 Five years after a campaign line that told older customers the brand wasn't for them any more, the jeweller's holiday film is about a mother passing something down to her daughter. Tiffany & Co. named Amanda Seyfried its newest house ambassador on 28 October. She debuts in "Love Is a Gift" and "You & Me", a two-minute short directed by Derek Cianfrance that moves between present-day New York and a December in the 1990s. Seyfried plays a choreographer and mother, and the story follows a Bird on a Rock ornament through three generations of women.
"You & Me" was directed by Derek Cianfrance, created with agency American Haiku and produced by Radical Media
Seyfried takes over the holiday campaign from Anya Taylor-Joy, who fronted last year's "Love Is a Gift", made with Anomaly
LVMH has owned Tiffany since a $15.8bn acquisition completed in early 2021
💡 In 2021 Tiffany ran "Not Your Mother's Tiffany" to win a younger buyer, and the mothers in question pushed back hard. This film corrects that, and it makes better commercial sense: a mother-to-daughter story sells to two generations at once, the older buyer who pays for the gift and the younger one who will one day inherit it. Seyfried has been wearing Tiffany at premieres for the past year, so the title makes official a relationship that already existed. The real asset on screen is the house's own archive, from the Schlumberger ornament to the holiday windows. Set this against the Later entry: most creator briefs now target one generation, and Tiffany has made a single film around the moment two generations share a purchase. 🎁
Adidas Originals Launches AdiSignature, a Permanent Line Developed With Willy Chavarria as Creative Adviser 👕
📌 After several sold-out collaborations, Willy Chavarria has gone from guest designer to adviser, and his name has come off the label. Adidas Originals launched AdiSignature on Friday 23 October, reworking the Firebird and SST tracksuits, hoodies and sweats in heavyweight fleece with 1980s colour blocking. Chavarria developed the line as creative adviser, but it carries no Chavarria branding. Unlike his limited co-branded drops, it's designed to stay in stock, with restocks as pieces sell out.
The line is built in 420g brushed-back fleece and centres on the Firebird and SST tracksuits
It's sold through adidas.com, adidas stores and selected retail partners
AdiSignature sits separately from Chavarria's ongoing co-branded adidas collaboration and is set up as a permanent line
💡 This is the deal a sportswear brand should want from a designer collaboration. The co-branded drops borrowed Chavarria's standing for a limited window. AdiSignature puts his eye for proportion and colour into a permanent line that carries only the Three Stripes, so what it creates stays with adidas whatever happens to any single partnership. It also takes the brand's best-received design thinking out of hype releases and onto the shop floor, where people who never queue for a collaboration can just buy it. The test is whether the line keeps the character of his work once his name is off it, because without that it's another range of plain sweats. 👟
Later Survey Finds 79% of Gen Z Have Bought Something They Discovered on Social Media 🛍️
📌 A creator brief written for "the digital shopper" is aimed at an audience that doesn't exist, according to new research from influencer marketing platform Later. Its survey of 1,079 consumers, run in March 2026 and published on 7 October, found that social discovery turns into purchases far more often among Gen Z and Millennials, while Boomers rely more on retailer reputation, Amazon and buying in store. The generational split shows up at every stage, from the formats that catch attention to where people check out and how far they trust an AI recommendation.
66% of respondents had bought something they first discovered on social media, rising to 79% of Gen Z and 76% of Millennials
5% of Boomers trust AI recommendations more than human ones, against around 16% of Gen Z and Millennials
Gen Z over-indexed on long-form video and Stories as discovery formats, Millennials on short-form video and livestreams
💡 The party missing from this research is the retailer. When a creator's post sends someone to a shop shelf, the retailer books the sale and the creator gets no credit. That pushes last-click measurement toward Gen Z checkouts inside TikTok Shop and away from audiences who buy offline. It also makes Boomers look less influenced than they may be: someone who saw a post and bought in store weeks later is unlikely to report that purchase as creator-driven in a self-reported survey. Read this alongside the Instagram Features entry, because the long-form discovery habit Later found among Gen Z is the behaviour Instagram is now paying YouTubers to bring onto its app. 🛒
(Source: Later, "Shopping habits by generation: What brands need to know", Taylor Cromwell More, 7 October 2026)
Jennifer Lawrence Launches Biotech Haircare Brand Mes° With Arcaea 💈
📌 Celebrity haircare is already a crowded shelf, with Beyonce's Cecred, Rihanna's Fenty Hair and Blake Lively's Blake Brown on it, so the newest arrival is leading with the lab. Jennifer Lawrence launched Mes° on Tuesday 27 October. She developed it with Jasmina Aganovic, the MIT-trained founder of biotechnology company Arcaea, after approaching her following a TED Talk. The first range is a repair mask, a volume mist and a restyling serum, sold only through the brand's own website and sold on the promise of fewer steps and more days between washes.
The three launch products are sold only through the brand's own site
Lawrence says she spent three years developing the range with Arcaea's scientists
Lawrence joined Instagram about a month before the launch
💡 A month ago Lawrence had no Instagram account, which sets Mes° apart from most celebrity beauty launches of the past decade. Fenty Beauty and Rare Beauty launched on the backs of founders with some of the biggest followings on the platform. Lawrence has fame but no direct channel, so a launch sold only on the brand's own website is asking a film audience to go and find it. That's why Arcaea matters more than the name on the bottle. A company that develops its own ingredients gives the brand a performance story that can outlast the launch coverage, and it gives Arcaea a consumer shop window for its science. The real test is the second bottle, because repeat purchase is the point where a celebrity brand stops depending on the celebrity. 🧴
Louis Vuitton's 2027 Men's Ski Collection Sells PFAS-Free Performance as Luxury ⛷️
📌 Luxury skiwear now has to pass a chemistry test as well as a style one. Pharrell Williams' 2027 men's ski collection for Louis Vuitton pairs technical outerwear with apres-ski pieces. On the slope side there's a Monogram parka with ripstop trousers, trouser systems built to fit over snowboard boots, and a hoodie with a built-in ventilated face guard. Off the slope there's a shearling trucker jacket printed to look like denim. The water-repellent fabrics used throughout are described as PFAS-free, and the range extends to shearling-lined LV Trainers, City Ranger boots and reflective Monogram luggage.
France has banned PFAS in consumer clothing, footwear and ski wax since 1 January 2026, and stock made before then can only be sold until 31 December 2026
The French ban extends to almost all textiles from 1 January 2030, with limited exemptions
The collection uses water-repellent, PFAS-free fabrics with waterproof fastenings and compartments for phones and goggles
💡 The most commercially important word in this collection is on the fabric label. France banned PFAS in consumer clothing and ski wax this year, and waterproof outerwear is the clothing most exposed to the change. A French house launching skiwear with PFAS-free water repellency is selling compliance as performance, and its prices give it room to absorb the cost of reformulating fabrics. The lesson for brand leaders goes beyond skiwear. Regulation is starting to set the product claims in luxury, and the houses that get there first can present the change as craftsmanship. 🏔️
Kith Casts Kit Harington in Its Winter 2026 Campaign ❄️
📌 The casting does the copywriting here. Kith's Winter 2026 film, released on Monday 26 October, follows Kit Harington through the English countryside while Wallace Stevens' 1921 poem The Snow Man plays over the footage, and almost every outlet covering it made the Jon Snow connection. The collection went on sale on Friday 30 October in Kith stores and on its site and app. It includes product with Timberland, Clarks Originals and adidas Originals, plus a first capsule with Japanese menswear label Seven by Seven.
The campaign film came out on 26 October and the collection went on sale on 30 October through Kith's own stores, site and app
The drop includes Kith x Timberland boots, a Clarks Originals 8th St collaboration, adidas Originals Classics and a debut Seven by Seven capsule
💡 The most valuable thing in this campaign belongs to HBO. Kith can't license Jon Snow, so it hired the actor, put him in a winter landscape and let a poem with the right title make the link. That gives the brand the pull of Game of Thrones without paying for the IP, and the association is borrowed twice over, because Harington doesn't own the character either. What Kith does own is the platform underneath: four partner brands selling through one seasonal drop on Kith's own channels, with the film working as the shop window for all of them. Compare Tiffany's holiday film, where the story on screen comes from the house's own archive. 🧥
Trinity Rodman and Natalia Bryant Make Their Victoria's Secret Fashion Show Debuts 💗
📌 Victoria's Secret is still recasting its own show, and this year the newest faces came from sport. Washington Spirit forward Trinity Rodman and model Natalia Bryant, daughters of 1998-99 Lakers teammates Dennis Rodman and Kobe Bryant, both debuted at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show on Sunday 18 October in pieces from the younger PINK line. Rodman walked the day after playing a full match in the Spirit's 1-0 win over Gotham FC, which clinched an NWSL playoff place. The show, livestreamed from Sony Pictures Studios, was back in Los Angeles for the first time since 2007.
It was the first Los Angeles show since 2007, and the event returned in 2024 after a six-year break
The show was livestreamed on Victoria's Secret's YouTube and social channels
Rodman follows WNBA All-Star Angel Reese and Olympic gymnast Suni Lee, the first athletes cast in the show in 2025
💡 The two debuts bring audiences that barely overlap. Rodman brings US women's football fans, Bryant brings a Lakers legacy and an LA basketball following, and both were put to work for PINK. That's a sharper way to rebuild a show once defined by a single look than casting more models of the same type, because each new face arrives with a community that has its own reason to watch a livestream. The trade works for the athletes too: a runway slot the day after a playoff-clinching match puts a women's football star in front of a fashion audience the NWSL rarely reaches. The casting is strongest where athlete and product match, and Rodman in sporty PINK pieces is a fit her fans can actually buy into. 🏃
Monet's Iris Sells for €50m at Sotheby's Paris, the Highest Price for an Artwork at Auction in France 🖼️
📌 The most valuable thing sold in Paris this autumn was a painting almost nobody had seen. Monet's Iris, painted around 1924-25, was kept for decades by oil heir Jeanne Schlumberger, who turned down loan requests. Her heirs sold it at Sotheby's on 22 October for €50m including fees, after six bidders competed for 45 minutes. It went to a private collector in Asia, beat a €22m to €30m estimate, and took the French auction record from Modigliani's Tete de cariatide, which sold for €43.2m in 2010.
€50m including fees (about $56.2m), against a presale estimate of €22m to €30m
The Schlumberger collection sale made €74.4m, Sotheby's highest-grossing fine art auction in Paris
Monet's world auction record remains $110.7m, set by Meules at Sotheby's New York in 2019
💡 Six bidders spent 45 minutes competing for a picture whose value came from never having been shown. Schlumberger refused loans for decades, so Iris arrived with no exhibition history and the story of a discovery attached, which helps explain how a late Monet more than doubled its low estimate. Paris did well out of the night too: it now holds France's auction record and Sotheby's biggest sale in the city, and the result beat a French Monet record Christie's had set only hours earlier. It also cuts against the rest of this edition. Instagram and Netflix are paying for audience, while the top price of the month went to an object that had never had one. 🎨
📱 MEDIA, STREAMING & PLATFORM
Netflix Cuts Its 2026 Ad Revenue Forecast to $2.7bn as Third-Quarter Revenue Rises 12% 📉
📌 A 34.6% operating margin and a missed ad target came in the same shareholder letter. On Tuesday 20 October Netflix reported third-quarter revenue of $12.9bn, up 12%, and net income of $3.66bn, ahead of forecasts. It also lowered its 2026 advertising revenue outlook to about $2.7bn from $3bn, blaming a slower rollout of ad product features and partner integrations. Shares fell after it guided fourth-quarter revenue to $13.44bn, below the $13.51bn analysts expected. The results came a week after it cut around 6% of its workforce.
Operating margin rose to 34.6% from 28.2% a year earlier, and Netflix bought back $4.8bn of shares in the quarter
Expansion of the ad tier to 15 more countries is now set for 2027, starting in March
Revenue per member on the ad-supported plan is still below the standard ad-free plan, though the gap is narrowing
💡 Netflix blamed the forecast cut on software, but the bigger question is what it has to sell to advertisers. Members on the ad plan still bring in less than ad-free members, so the gap has to be closed with viewing hours advertisers will pay a premium for. The other Netflix stories in this edition point the same way: licensed video podcasts aimed at daytime viewing, U2 at a new NFL holiday game, and interest in bidding for the 2030 World Cup. Apple's F1 results show the opposite approach, selling very little ad inventory at a high price because it's scarce. Netflix has the margins to fund its version, and the 2027 rollout to 15 more countries is where that plan gets tested. 📊
Netflix Hires Former Apple Podcasts Executive Steve Wilson to Lead Podcast Acquisitions 🎙️
📌 A year into its video podcast push, the streamer has put a dealmaker in charge, in the same month it announced its deepest job cuts since 2022. Netflix confirmed it has hired Steve Wilson, one of the earliest members of the Apple Podcasts team, to run podcast content acquisition, starting as a consultant. Since January it has added video podcasts licensed from Spotify's The Ringer, iHeartMedia and Barstool Sports, along with originals such as The Pete Davidson Show. Under several of those deals, full video episodes have come off YouTube.
Wilson spent around 15 years at Apple from 2006, working across editorial, partner relations and marketing for Apple Podcasts
Netflix is cutting about 6% of its global workforce, roughly 1,000 jobs
Netflix publishes viewing time for its shows twice a year but has released no viewing figures for its podcasts
💡 Read this next to the Instagram Features entry, because two platforms went after YouTube's long-form shows in the same week with opposite deals. Instagram pays creators to post the same video on the same day, while Netflix pays publishers for exclusive video rights and takes full episodes off YouTube, leaving the audio free to go everywhere. Netflix chose an acquisitions specialist to lead the push, which tells you it wants a catalogue of proven shows, licensed from the companies that already hold the talent. That keeps the risk low and the spend small next to a content budget of roughly $20bn. It also means the relationships that make these shows work stay with iHeart, Barstool and Spotify. 📺
Instagram Tests 90-Minute Video and Pays YouTubers up to $500,000 to Cross-Post 📺
📌 Four years after shutting down IGTV, and after its own boss spent years arguing against long-form video, Instagram has gone back to horizontal video. Features is being tested with a small group of creators in the US and Brazil. It allows widescreen uploads of up to 90 minutes, with Reels working as clickable trailers into the full video, and Instagram's TV app is now on Apple TV in the US. There is no ad revenue share, so Meta is cutting confidential deals with selected YouTubers instead, on condition that they post each video to Instagram the same day it goes up on YouTube.
Features is testing video lengths of up to 90 minutes with a small creator group in the US and Brazil
Selected creators have been offered between $50,000 and $500,000, with no exclusivity but a same-day posting requirement
YouTube's Partner Program pays creators 55% of eligible ad revenue. Instagram has no equivalent share on Features yet
💡 The same-day clause tells you what Instagram is really buying. It is borrowing YouTube's library, paying a small number of creators to mirror their uploads until there is enough horizontal watch time on living-room screens to sell ads against. Tessa Lyons has said existing sponsorships carry over into Features, so a brand integration bought for YouTube now gets Instagram distribution at no extra cost. That free placement lasts until agencies start pricing it into rate cards. For brand teams, the move right now is to back the creators Instagram is funding, whose long-form work reaches two audiences for one fee, before thinking about commissioning 90 minutes of their own. 🎬
Apple Says Formula 1 Sponsors Beat US Connected-TV Benchmarks in Its First Season 🏎️
📌 A streamer with no ad breaks has found its advertising product in live sport. In its first season as F1's exclusive US broadcaster, Apple sold integrations to American Express and Ford. Apple Ads vice president Todd Teresi told The Hollywood Reporter that brand lift studies, commissioned by Apple and its advertisers, showed those sponsors beating US connected-TV benchmarks on familiarity, favourability and purchase intent. Apple is now selling season two, and advertising on Apple TV remains limited to live sport such as F1 and MLS.
Apple's five-year exclusive US F1 deal began in 2026 and is reported at around $140m a year, against roughly $85m a year paid by ESPN
F1 viewership on Apple TV is up by double digits on ESPN's final season, according to Apple's Eddy Cue
Apple TV has no ad-supported tier and carries advertising only around live sport
💡 Scarcity is what Apple is selling. Apple TV has no ad tier and no ad breaks around its films and series, so a race weekend is the only place a brand can reach its audience at scale, and that's why Teresi can charge premium rates for a US-only audience. Both launch partners already had a reason to be in the sport. American Express sells presale access and race-day perks, and Ford is back in F1 for 2026, so their advertising also works as fan service. Apple can also promote a rights deal across more of its own products than a traditional broadcaster can, from Maps and News to Music. It's the same approach Apple Music's Road to Halftime takes around the Super Bowl, covered in the Jay-Z entry. 🏁
Judge Orders Trump to Give Deposition in His $10bn Defamation Case Against the BBC by 11 December ⚖️
📌 Ten months after filing the lawsuit, the plaintiff has been told to sit for questioning. On Thursday 22 October a federal magistrate judge in Miami ruled that President Trump must be deposed by BBC lawyers by 11 December, or face sanctions that could include dismissal of the case. His team had proposed a date in January 2027. The suit concerns a Panorama documentary, broadcast before the 2024 US election, that spliced together two separate parts of his 6 January 2021 speech. The BBC has apologised for the edit but denies defamation and is seeking to have the case dismissed.
Trump is seeking $10bn in damages
Discovery is due to close on 18 December, with the case expected to go to trial in 2027
BBC director general Tim Davie and BBC News chief executive Deborah Turness stepped down in the fallout from the edit
💡 Whatever the court decides, the BBC has already paid the biggest cost of this case, and the currency was leadership. An independent company, October Films, made the documentary, yet it was the director general and the head of news who stepped down, because a broadcaster's name carries everything it puts out. For any organisation that outsources content, that's the lesson worth keeping: a supplier's edit is the brand's own reputation risk, and an apology settles the question of trust long before a court settles the legal one. The timing adds pressure, with the BBC's Royal Charter up for renewal at the end of 2027, the same year the case is due in court. 📺
🎧 Elon's Skydance Bet, Netflix's New Rival, and the YouTube Problem
The Town with Matthew Belloni (The Ringer) | Host: Matthew Belloni | Guest: Lucas Shaw, Bloomberg | 33 min | Spotify
📌 Why It Matters: A week after Netflix's Q3 numbers and its hire of a podcast lead, Belloni and Shaw ask the question underneath both stories: whether any streamer can compete with YouTube for attention it doesn't commission. They also take on Elon Musk's reported $1 billion stake in the merged Skydance studio and whether that creates the first real scale rival Netflix has faced.
✅ Worth Your Time Because: it's the best 33 minutes this week for anyone who read the Netflix entries and wondered how they fit together. The video-podcast push, the U2 deal and the Q3 margins are all one bet: that Netflix can win the hours people currently spend on YouTube without becoming YouTube. Belloni is Hollywood's sharpest dealmaking reporter and Shaw has the platform data, so you get the money and the industry politics in one conversation.
Monday 2 November - Sunday 8 November 2026
🗳️ US midterm elections, Tuesday 3 November: This is the first midterm cycle with both Kalshi and Polymarket US trading legally at scale, so watch how much of the night's attention goes to the odds rather than the polls, a week after the NFL went to the Supreme Court over the same platforms.
🎟️ Live Nation Q3 results, Thursday 5 November: The first results since the AIF tracker and the Commons report put Live Nation's UK share on the record, so listen for how management talks about the British market and the CMA, as well as the stadium count.
🏉 Nations Championship November window opens, Friday 6 November: Scotland v New Zealand at Murrayfield on Saturday and England v Australia at Twickenham on Sunday are the first autumn Tests to count towards a league table, which gives rugby's friendlies real stakes ahead of a Twickenham finals weekend at the end of the month.
🏎️ São Paulo Grand Prix, 6-8 November: The last race before Las Vegas in Apple TV's first season as F1's US home, and a good moment to watch how Apple carries the off-track storytelling that made the sport valuable to a US audience in the first place.
🏈 NFL Madrid Game: Bengals v Falcons at the Bernabéu, Sunday 8 November: The second regular-season game in Spain is part of a multi-year deal between the NFL, Real Madrid and the city and regional governments, and it shows a football club's stadium being sold as a global events venue first and a home ground second.
🎾 WTA Finals open at Indian Wells, Sunday 8 November: The tour's season finale has moved from Riyadh to California with five months' notice, its seventh venue since 2018, while PIF's name stays on the race to qualify. The venue moved and the money stayed, and that gap is the story.
