Digits: Van Gogh’s business boom, America’s melatonin craze, and more wild numbers

Plus: NYC’s bird problems, sports betting heats up, and more.

1) Before the pandemic, 7B+ business cards were printed annually. Vistaprint saw business card sales plummet 70% between mid-March and April of 2020 (they’ve recovered some but not to pre-pandemic levels).

Digits: Van Gogh’s business boom, America’s melatonin craze, and more wild numbers

2) Immersive Van Gogh exhibits — which cost ~$1m to set up — are booming. Lighthouse Immersive’s project has sold 3.2m tickets across 21 cities and is the largest buyer of Panasonic projectors worldwide.

3) Between 90k-230k birds crash into NYC skyscrapers each year. NYC Audubon is pushing skyscraper owners to turn down their lights at night, because the brightness attracts the birds.

4) In 2020, US spending on melatonin exploded 42.6%. One international study last year found 40% of people were sleeping worse than in pre-pandemic times.

5) GeoComply, a company used by sports betting apps to verify people are betting in legal locations, said it processed 58.2m transactions from Sept. 9-12, +126% from last year.

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