Category Archives: Entertainment

the Supreme Court ruled against Aereo yesterday

June 26, 2014 By in Aereo, Cable, Entertainment, internet Tags: , , , , 1 Comment

Aereo, the antenna company

As Aereo would describe itself, it’s kind of like a company that rents storage lockers to individuals–only it rents TV antennas.  Each customer has his own individual micro-antenna, located in a central antenna farm.  These micro-antennas receive the free over-the-air broadcasts from the major TV networks and retransmit them over the internet to a customer device, where TV programs can be viewed in real time.

If Aereo had started up ten years ago, this might not have been a big deal.  But in today’s world the TV networks collect hundreds of millions of dollars in annual retransmission fees from cable networks in return for allowing them to stream network content in real time to cable customers.  In the current cord-cutting environment, Aereo offers/ed an easy and cheap way for getting TV content (sports programming is the key) without having a cable subscription.

Aereo had two claims:

–it was acting just as if it were putting a rental antenna on each customer’s roof, only the antenna is located in a warehouse somewhere with good reception, and

–because each customer was choosing what to have streamed to him, even if there were copyright issues, the networks’ beef is with the individual customer, not Aereo.

prior lawsuits

The networks sued Aereo in Federal court in New York   …and lost.  They sued an Aereo knockoff  in Utah   …and won.

Both Aereo and the networks urged the Supreme Court to take the case and decide.

the ruling

The decision, 6 – 3 against Aereo, with the most conservative justices dissenting, came yesterday.

If I understand the ruling (don’t bet the farm that I do), the decision came in a way that Aereo hadn’t expected.

The majority said that back in the day, cable companies set up their own antennas to capture over-the-air network content and deliver it to cable customers without paying the networks for doing so.  Congress expressly made this illegal in 1976, through a revision to the Copyright Act .  So it didn’t matter if Aereo owned one humongous antenna or a gazillion teeny-tiny ones.  It also didn’t matter that the customer ordered his personal antenna to send the content or not.  All that mattered was that Congress outlawed delivering real-time network content without paying retransmission fees.

The majority also made a point of distinguishing real time delivery from time-shifting, where a customer records content for later viewing.

stock market implications

Take the Aereo IPO off your calendar for now.

It’s a big win for the broadcasters, protecting their cable retransmission fees for at least several years.

Unfortunately for them, it also leaves a lot up in the air.  We now know what Aereo can’t do, which is stream network content in real time, or with a brief delay.  But could it stream content with an hour lag?   …or the next day?  What about someone who records copyrighted content and shares it through Dropbox?  Is Dropbox responsible, or is it only the user who’s in trouble?

This case seems to show that operating through a big bunch of teeny antennas is colorful, but provided no legal protection.

My guess is that someone, maybe not Aereo, but someone, will try to revive the service, building in a time delay.  I’m not sure how much people would be willing to pay for time-shifted content, but my hunch is the audience would be surprisingly large.

Anyway, I think this possibility will prevent the content companies from running away to the upside.

 

 

 

Revel bankruptcy, a sign of Atlantic City’s continuing gambling woes

June 20, 2014 By in Casinos, Entertainment, Industry Analysis Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Maybe this shows I’m just not so inspired this morning  …because it’s the last day of Spring?

As I was collecting data for this post, I noticed that the Revel casino in Atlantic City filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday.  The pipe dream of Morgan Stanley master-of-the-universe wannabees, the Revel was supposed to be the upscale entry in a market that caters to little old ladies with buckets of quarters.  Not only was the concept suspect, but the timing was awful, coinciding as it did with the peaking of the seaside town’s gambling win in 2006.  Oddly, in my view, the state government pumped more than a quarter billion dollars into Revel in 2011 to help get it open.  That’s a half-decade after the numbers began to show that the last thing the existing gaming operations needed was more capacity.

Revel is actually the second AC casino bankruptcy in recent months.  Last November, the Atlantic Club (which was, once upon a time, the Golden Nugget) entered Chapter 11; in January it closed its doors.

Aggregate casino revenue for Atlantic City has been dropping steadily since the legalization of casino gambling in nearby Pennsylvania (casinos have since opened in Maryland, Delaware and New York.  More are on the drawing board for NY and Massachusetts).  The current run rate is slightly above half of the peak.

As I wrote about at the time, last year Trenton tried to breathe some new life into Atlantic City, which even in its weakened condition will chip in $150 million – $200 million in tax revenue to the state, by allowing online gambling.

Early predictions by the politicians were that online gamblers would boost aggregate casino win (the amount lost by gamblers) by $1 billion.  Microeconomically minded might observe that some of this new-found money might come from gamblers betting online instead of in the physical casinos–so it might not be a pure gain.  In addition, any redistribution might deepen the plight of any casino that didn’t offer an online option.

But, since the state tax on online gambling revenue is almost double that for onsite betting (15% vs. 8%), Trenton would likely come out a winner no matter what collateral damage might occur.

results so far

Through May, online gambling has generated $53.5 million in casino win, or about $10 million a month.  On the same measure, physical casinos are down by 6.5% year-on-year, or about $74.0 million.   …Ouch.

significance?

While it’s still early days, online gambling in New Jersey so far seems to be a bust for everyone except the tax collector.  So Las Vegas may have little to worry about.

Also, in the Northeast US at least, there appears to be a relatively fixed amount of money that people are willing to spend on gambling in the local area.  New casino openings–of which there are plenty in the pipeline–don’t appear to add much to aggregate demand, but rather mostly shift money from one pocket to another–and add to overall industry costs.  This implies continuing trouble for overbuilt areas like Atlantic City, or, eventually, any of the other states that are adding capacity.

 

 

 

Macau gambling, May 2014

June 5, 2014 By in Casinos, China, Entertainment, Hong Kong, Macau, Stock ideas Tags: , , , Leave a comment

The day before yesterday, the Macau Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DICJ) posted the total monthly gambling “win” (the amount lost by gamblers) for the SAR’s casinos during May.  The results were below analysts’ expectations, causing a selloff in the US gambling stocks with Macau presence, and a minor negative ripple in the Hong Kong-traded Macau casino stocks themselves.

The year-to-date DICJ results are:

Monthly Gross Revenue from Games of Fortune in 2014 and 2013
Monthly Gross Revenue Accumulated Gross Revenue
2014 2013 Variance 2014 2013 Variance
Jan 28,739 26,864 +7.0% 28,739 26,864 +7.0%
Feb 38,007 27,084 +40.3% 66,746 53,948 +23.7%
Mar 35,453 31,336 +13.1% 102,199 85,284 +19.8%
Apr 31,318 28,305 +10.6% 133,517 113,589 +17.5%
May 32,354 29,589 +9.3% 165,871 143,178 +15.8%

Source: Macau Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau

What’s going on?

First of all, and least important, the market had been expecting a 10%+ year-on-year gain in aggregate casino win, based on weekly reports of business results provided by the casinos.  The falloff during the last few days of the month is most likely a random variation in the casino luck factor, one that will eventually be reversed.

More generally, the so-so rate of yoy gain in win is the result of two opposing factors.  On the one hand, increases is betting by mainland high-rollers, the almost exclusive focus of the Macau market over the past decade, have slowed to a crawl.  On the other, affluent mass-market gambling is rising sharply.  Mass market gamblers bet smaller amounts, but lose a much higher percentage of the amount bet than VIPs (who are more or less professional gamblers).  Mass market patrons want entertainment, not necessarily gambling profits, so they don’t watch what they’re doing so closely.  They also spend a lot more on things like restaurants, shows and shopping.  We’ll know more about non-gambling when June financial reports are released by the casinos, but non-gambling profits have been rising sharply from a small base.  It’s important to remember that in the salad days of Las Vegas, non-gambling amounted to half of casino industry profits.  So growth in Macau has potentially a long way to grow.

The overall Macau market is facing capacity constraints that will only begin to easy next year.  In a sense, the current lull in new capacity additions is ending up being luckily timed, since it coincides with a slowdown in the VIP market.

All in all, it seems to me that the March-May gains in casino win are more indicative of what the rest of the year will be like than January-February.

The related stocks have sold off by about 20%–more than I would have expected–in a flat Hong Kong market over the past few months.  Stocks like Sands China and Galaxy Entertainment, which have little VIP exposure and lots of mass market, have declined at least as much as Wynn Macau, which is in the opposite position.

I find the Macau stocks hard to figure out.  It’s not their profit potential, it’s the way they trade in the Hong Kong market.  The current situation of little capacity addition was well-known a year ago.  The VIP slowdown could equally well have been anticipated.  I think the mass market and non-gambling profit development has been much more positive this year than the consensus expected.  In other words, the negatives are no worse, and the positives are a lot better.  Yet the stocks went up last year and have sold off so far in 2014.

My take?  I’m in this for the long haul.  I sold my Wynn Macau quite a while ago and have been looking for a reentry point.  Not yet, though.  I continue to own Galaxy Entertainment and would own Sands China as well, if it were easier for a US citizen to buy.  I’m looking to add to my holdings, but am in no rush.

Macau casinos, after their stock market decline

May 7, 2014 By in Casinos, China, economics, Entertainment, Hong Kong, Industry Analysis, Japanese development, Macau Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

a weak few months

Macau casinos, and their foreign parents, have been bludgeoned in the stock market over the past couple of months.  Several reasons:

–general worry about stocks that had gone up a lot

–the Ukraine situation, which has unnerved European investors

–fear that the the current anti-corruption/anti-excessive consumption drive by Beijing will hurt the VIP business which has been the heart of Macau casino profits, and

–the possible proliferation of casino openings elsewhere in China, or in other Asian countries like the Philippines or Japan.

what, me worry?

Every portfolio investor acts on small amounts of imperfect information.  That’s why we don’t put all our eggs in one basket (Bernard Baruch to the contrary).   From where I sit, a lot of the negative things now being said about Macau seem to be (mistaken) attempts to explain the stock price drops.   I don’t think they have much factual basis.  Of course, even the best stock market investor is wrong 40%+ of the time.

For what it’s worth, here’s my take:

–So far there’s no hard evidence so far that Beijing’s anti-corruption campaign is having any negative effect on the VIP gambling business in Macau.

–More important, the Macau gambling market is no longer being driven solely by VIPs.  The new sweet spot is the mass affluent, a market segment that’s now the source of most of the SAR’s growth.  How so?  VIPs bet huge amounts, but they’re semi-professional gamblers.  They lose on average about 3% of the amount they bet; the casino rebates half of that, either to the high roller himself or to the middlemen who has brought him there.  So margins are razor-thin.  The mass affluent, on the other hand, are seeking entertainment.  At table games, they make much smaller bets, but they lose about a quarter of what they wager–and they don’t care that much.   A mass affluent pataca bet is worth 15x-20x in casino operating profit what a high roller pataca is.  Hordes of them are now descending on Macau.  (There’s also a shift among winners and losers within the market, but that’s another story.)

The mass affluent also want non-gambling entertainment.  In the salad days of Las Vegas, shows, concerts, restaurants…brought in just as much profit as the casino operations.  In Macau, this business is still in its infancy.  But I see no reason why Macau in the end will be any different.

–Transportation links are still being built to allow more far-flung areas of China to reach Macau, meaning market saturation is still years off.

–It makes no sense to me to believe both (1) that Beijing’s crackdown is aimed squarely at casinos and (2) that the government will give permission for more casinos to open in other areas of China.  But this is what some bears are saying.

–Macau has critical mass and lots of amenities.  Chinese is the dominant language.  Kidnapping high rollers isn’t an issue.  Japanese casinos, whatever they may eventually look like, are years away.  Singapore has already been up and running for a considerable while–and Chinese junket operators aren’t welcome there anyway.  Some VIPs will certainly try out the Philippines or other venues.  I just don’t see this as a big deal.

 

Yes, I trimmed my Macau exposure significantly last year–because my position size was much too large.   At this point, I’m a potential buyer, not a seller.

 

rent vs. buy: digital goods

April 8, 2014 By in Amazon, Current Market Thoughts, e-readers, Entertainment, Facebook, internet, Publishing Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

My daughter, who’s very interested in digital goods, suggested that I write about them.

Why?

They’re new, and they’re different.  Also, Laura supplied a lot of the information in this post.

Part of the difference between the digital goods we have now and their physical counterparts is in the nature of the beast(s).  Part, however, comes the desire of sellers–particularly Apple–to recreate the AOL-style “walled garden” that tethers the buyer to a given seller’s product line and secures fat profits for the retailer.

Some examples:

Generally speaking, for digital goods like e-books, or songs or movies, you don’t really own the digital copy you download.  You only have a license to use it.  Kindle owners found this out early on.  Amazon was inadvertently distributing 1984 without having bought the digital rights.  When the company found out–presumably when the rights holder called asking for money–Amazon simply went “Poof!” and made the book disappear from all the Kindles it had appeared on.  Apparently very few of the shocked Orwell fans had read the fine print in the Kindle service agreement.  It is kind of funny, though.

Usually, you can’t give your download to someone else.  You may be able to lend it for a short period of time, but maybe not.

The digital good may appear on all of your devices.   …or it may appear just on all your Android devices but not Apple, or vice versa.

 

The most peculiar aspect of digital goods, to my mind, is what happens with e-books in (if that’s the right word) libraries.  Many authors or imprints won’t sell e-books to libraries, so the selection is limited.  At least some sellers place counters in the downloads, so that the copy disappears after a certain number of borrowings.  It isn’t a quality control issue–a worry that the digital copy has somehow degraded;  it’s to mimic what happens to physical books, which eventually fall apart after repeated use.   In other words, it’s to force the library to pay again after a certain number of uses.

 

investment significance?

Maybe there’s none.

On the other hand, I think we’ve got to distinguish carefully between essential characteristics of digital goods and those that are a function of sellers’ desire to create closed “ecosystems.”  After all, the AOL walled garden lost any allure it had (I never got it) when people discovered there was a big wide world outside the AOL server farms that AOL got in the way of people experiencing.

I suspect the same will eventually happen with Apple–personally, I think this might be happening already.  As/when this occurs, I’d expect the price of digital goods in general to fall (maybe a lot).  A sharp separation will probably also emerge between high-quality content, whose unit sales will increase (again, maybe by a lot), and me-too content, which will disappear.