Endeavor

Seth Matlins on Marketing's Horizontal Blind Spot

Seth Matlins, founder of The Wisdomous Company and host of the Create or Destroy podcast, joins Matt Britton on the Speed of Culture podcast to discuss evolving marketing leadership. The conversation covers the need for horizontal thinking across organizations, the role of marketing as a strategic and financial engine, the nuance behind data on executive tenure, and how brands build emotional connections through identity. Matlins draws on experience including roles at Live Nation, the Forbes CMO network, CAA, Rock the Vote and Endeavor. The piece is a podcast episode summary published on 2026-08-18.

TKO’s Parsed Rights Stack Reprices Live-Attention

This analysis of TKO Group Holdings (the merged WWE/UFC business) argues the company parceled live-attention inventory into discrete, long‑term licensing deals that resemble credit instruments more than traditional media rights. Over 24 months TKO placed four program blocks with multiple counterparties, creating a combined annual coupon of roughly $2.2 billion and a contracted forward value north of $16 billion. The piece highlights the January 23, 2024 Netflix deal for Monday Night Raw — a 10‑year, $5 billion arrangement ($500M/year) — as a textbook example of instrument-asset fit where the platform assumes operating risk and TKO retains IP and collects contracted cash flow. The column also recounts TKO’s April 2023 merger background, the Silver Lake-led take‑private of Endeavor (closed March 24, 2025), Apollo’s launch of Apollo Sports Capital (Sept 29, 2025), and the wind‑down of WWE’s DTC experiment (WWE Network licensed to Peacock in 2021). The author frames TKO’s parsed rights stack as a working prototype for “live‑attention” as a securitizable, credit‑grade asset class.

Former IPG Mediabrands CEO Matt Seiler On Studio71’s Push To Take On TV

Studio71, an MCN owned by ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE, aims to be a media company for social media creators. Matt Seiler, former chairman of IPG Mediabrands, was appointed president of marketing solutions to connect brands with creators and ensure sponsor funding aligns with creators’ interests. Seiler envisions MCNs competing for brand dollars on par with traditional media as platforms like Snapchat and Facebook democratize video spend. Studio71 reports 5 billion video views per month across 1,200 channels and claims roughly 20% of Google Preferred channel inventory. The company emphasizes a creator-first model and cites The Rock as a fast-growing partner. The article also discusses automation in media planning and the evolving TV/digital landscape.