Six Things: Learning, Peacock, Audiobooks, Expectations, Fixing the Packers and Why You Were Wrong on the Clippers

I’ve got to get back to posting more, but for now I wanted to do some quick hits.

• Learn by doing – I’m sort of cheap. In some ways that can be a good thing, in a lot of ways that is a bad thing. One idea I’ve always liked was learning by doing, so I’ve decided to apply that to gambling. I’m trying to set up a win win situation. Either I legit get good at gambling and make a crap ton of money… or I figure out I can’t gamble, lose some money in doing so, but walk away with way stronger coding skills. I’ve got way more motivation to learn this way. What I lose by gambling will be far cheaper than going through a classical coding education.
• Peacock math – Peacock spent $110M to exclusively stream an NFL playoff game. On the surface, this is sort of crazy, but when you step back to look at this it makes a little more sense. The game peaked at 24.6 million viewers at once and had 27.6 million total viewers. For easy numbers, let’s assume this game got 10 million additional subscribers (doesn’t seem absurd given Peacock had 28 million subscribers in total, but who knows). That would put the CAC (customer acquisition cost) at $11 per user. Assuming a gross margin of 50% and a $6 per month charge, then that would be $3 in gross margin per month. That would require 4 months of payback for the CAC. If I’m Peacock, I’ll take that deal every time. The real problem for any subscription product is churn. The estimates I’ve seen have Peacock at 6% churn per month which is very high. Worse yet, I bet the churn skyrocketed even higher after the game. Overall, I think this gamble makes sense for Peacock, but they are fighting for their life and the ultimate death for a subscription business is churn.
• James Harden on the Clippers – People were hating hard on the James Harden trade to the Clippers (**cough** Bill Simmons **cough**) and now still can’t quite comprehend why the trade is working well for the Clippers. James Harden is an amazing passer on a team that had no passing. No Russell Westbrook doesn’t count. I’m not quite buying that Harden won’t lock up in the playoffs… but adding an amazing passer to a team of wings and bigs has amazing benefits. People completely underrate the impact that not having passing can have on an offense. P.S. – this is also why the Celtics continually lock up during clutch time…
• Spotify Audiobooks – I haven’t seen anyone really talking about Spotify audiobooks. It has been a quiet rollout, which isn’t a bad thing, but Spotify tends to rely on viral marketing… or bringing way too much costs in house. I’m hoping the former develops before the latter. Either way, from a user stand point streaming audiobooks is awesome.
• Three step plan to fix the Packers:
  • Fire Joe Barry
  • Hire Jim Leonhard
  • Invest in the o line / d line
    • I’m not entirely sure that the Packers need to be fixed, but when you look at age and factor in some development next year… the Packers could be in a great spot. The defense needs to step it up and then let the offense develop.
• Expectations are a funny thing. I try to keep expectations low, but they sneak up on you, especially in sports. One of the weird examples is that this Packers season will likely be much more positive for Wisconsin sports fans than this Bucks season, despite the Bucks being much more likely to win a championship. The Packers had no expectations, so it was easy to clear them. The Bucks have the best player in the league, so naturally, their expectations are sky-high. Being a sports fan is weird.