🏀 The women’s tournament is money

Hey, should I chat up Theo, a tattooed musician, or confident web designer Dakota? That’s a dilemma in “Too Hot to Handle: Love Is a Game,” one of Netflix’s most-played games, downloaded 1m+ times since its December release.

Over the last two years, Netflix has made a series of gaming acquisitions, and opened its own studios in Helsinki and California. On Monday, VP of external games Leanne Loombe provided another update:

• Netflix’s collection now comprises 55 games, including new originals based on Netflix IPs and existing titles from other developers.
• It will add 40 more this year.
• There are 70 new games in development with gaming partners, plus 16 being developed in-house.

Forthcoming games…

… include, yes, a “Too Hot to Handle” sequel, plus tie-ins to shows including “The Queen’s Gambit” and “Shadow and Bone.”

Games span a variety of genres, which Loombe wrote is an intentional strategy to appeal to a broad audience.

Despite all that…

… less than 1% of Netflix subscribers regularly engaged with its games as of August, per IGN.

The streamer’s value proposition is good. It offers members fun games — many tied to IPs fans already know and love — with no additional fees.

But they’re all mobile — not available on the laptops and TVs consumers often use to browse Netflix. Netflix intends to develop a cloud gaming service for TVs and PCs (Amazon did that last year).

That service is in very early development, but it’s hard to bet against Netflix. After all, they did get 142m households to watch people play a life-or-death version of “Red Light, Green Light.”

Meanwhile: Microsoft announced plans to launch a gaming app store for iOS and Android — but that’s assuming its acquisition of Activision Blizzard happens.

Even as recently as last year, using powerful AI models at work was not on our “Things you’re hiding from your boss” bingo card, but here we are.

A recent survey of 11k+ people on Fishbowl, a social network for professionals, found 43% of workers have now used tools like ChatGPT on the job.

The kicker? The survey also found ~70% of them are doing so without their boss knowing.

The rules are being rewritten (by humans… we think)

Some Wall Street firms including Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, and Wells Fargo have banned the use of AI chatbots, per Bloomberg. But only 3% of HR leaders surveyed by Gartner say they’ve instituted such bans.

Many companies are embracing the tools. Gartner’s survey found 48% of HR leaders are working to finalize AI-usage policies, while 34% don’t plan to issue any guidance.

At Microsoft, the company’s new AI tools are being tested with eight Fortune 500 firms.

One known in a sea of unknowns

Soon enough it’ll become increasingly difficult to not use tools like ChatGPT in some way, shape, or form at work.

• OpenAI has made serious progress getting its technology into the office. Last week, it (quite literally) became a central part of the Office suite.

Bottom line: Early adopters are (secretly) already putting AI to work for them, and it appears much of corporate America is preparing to catch up.

The women’s NCAA Tournament narrowed to 16 teams last night, but another Sweet 16% looms large over the sport’s future.

After last year’s tourney ratings increased 16% YoY, per AP, the national final will return to TV’s biggest stage: ABC’s April 2 broadcast will be the first women’s title game on network TV in 28 years. All ad slots have sold out.

Cash outlook: buckets

Bigger money may follow. When ESPN’s wider college deal expires next year, the NCAA will reportedly consider selling women’s tournament rights separately (as it does for the men’s tourney).

The value of sports broadcasting rights deals have exploded in recent years.

• MLS netted $2.5B from Apple last year; the soccer league’s past season averaged ~450k viewers on network TV, per Sports Business Journal data.
• By comparison, the women of last year’s March Madness reeled in an average of 634k viewers per game across the ESPN networks. That number jumped to 4.85m viewers for the title game, just ~1m fewer than the 2022 Emmys.

It isn’t just college basketball that’s thriving

The WNBA is also on the rise. Per The Wall Street Journal, TV ratings are up and the pro league’s first capital-raising round brought in $75m.

Franchise values are skyrocketing — The Seattle Storm was recently valued at $151m — and as journalist Lindsay Gibbs points out, the WNBA even outpaces NBA valuation at this point in its history.

League expansion is on the table. That would likely command steep entry fees.

• Women’s soccer league NWSL, also booming, recorded franchise fees of ~$50m each for its incoming Bay Area and Boston teams.

Even the sneakers show the women’s game ascending — when WNBA All-Star Sabrina Ionescu’s Nike shoe launches this spring, adult sizes will go for $125, a higher price point than signature shoes from NBA stars Jayson Tatum and Ja Morant.