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PREVIEW VERSION
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UFC’s $1B Fantasy, Dems’ Senate Scramble, A Saks Global Confessional
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Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your pocket guide to Puck’s best new reporting.
First up today, Kim Masters gathers the latest boardroom chatter inside Warner Bros., Disney, and Paramount: If Sinners becomes a sleeper hit, will it delay Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy’s seemingly inevitable exit from Warner Bros.? Which Paramount executives will get the axe if the Skydance deal goes through? And has Josh D’Amaro leapfrogged
Dana Walden in the Disney C.E.O. sweepstakes?
Plus, below the fold: Lauren Sherman grills Saks Global C.E.O. Marc Metrick about the company’s late vendor payments and LVMH’s preferential side deals. John Ourand and UTA sports media boss Jerry Silbowitz discuss why broadcast talent are finding greener pastures on YouTube and TikTok. And Abby Livingston
examines why Democratic leaders are taking an unusually laissez-faire approach to a trio of potentially explosive Senate primaries.
Meanwhile, on the pods: Dylan Byers welcomes Michael Wolff on The Grill Room for a deep dive into his recent New York profile of David Zaslav. On Fashion People, Lauren and retail real estate guru Jonathan Schley
dig into the Prada Group’s $1.4 billion acquisition of Versace. On The Town, Matt Belloni and Lucas Shaw debate which entertainment companies are best suited to weather Trump’s tariff storm. And on The Powers That Be, Peter Hamby and John assess UFC’s potential multibillion-dollar rights negotiations.
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Kim Masters
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In this roundup of the latest Hollywood C-suite drama, Kim digs into the leadership questions facing Disney, Paramount,
and Warner Bros. Discovery. Over at WBD, film studio co-heads Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy seemed destined for defenestration—until their Minecraft movie came roaring out of the gate. Will the star-studded Sinners turn into a sleeper hit and buy them more time? Meanwhile, Paramount is in the throes of a legal squabble with Trump, which has hindered the Skydance acquisition. But even if the deal is finalized, there are plenty of questions facing David
Ellison about the composition of the new Paramount org chart. Finally, is there any credence to the chatter that Josh D’Amaro has taken pole position in the Disney C.E.O. succession sweepstakes?
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Lauren Sherman
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Ever since last year’s Saks-Neiman merger, Saks Global C.E.O. Marc Metrick has become the company’s convenient villain.
Not only does his company still owe brands millions of dollars, but he’s also reckoning with the fall of Hudson’s Bay Company in Canada, the closure of Neiman Marcus’s historic downtown Dallas location, waves of layoffs, tariffs, and global recession fears. Lauren sat down with Marc to address it all—and, of course, the elephant in the room: Why did Saks owe brands so much money in the first place?
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John Ourand
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The media business, above all else, is a copycat game. So when ESPN signed lucrative and loophole-laden deals with Pat
McAfee and Stephen A. Smith, virtually every agent received inbound from their roster of clients looking for similar concessions. And while they weren’t necessarily agitating for Stephen A.’s $20 million salary, they wanted some of the same Stephen A.-esque flexibility to create content on other platforms. To break down the evolving playbook for building lucrative, long-term, non-leaky sports media careers, John connected with UTA’s co-head of sports media, Jerry Silbowitz, for his candid
assessment of the landscape.
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Abby Livingston
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The Democratic establishment typically tries to clamp down on primaries for U.S. Senate races to avoid arduous,
unnecessary, and painfully expensive campaigns. But this year, the congressional map is stacked with potential slugfests among ambitious up-and-comers in Michigan, Minnesota, and New Hampshire—and, in an unusual twist, Democratic leadership isn’t making any overt moves to intervene. As Abby reports, it’s the latest indication of a breakdown in the traditionally top-down management of a Democratic Party in the process of reinventing itself.
Read Now
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Dylan Byers
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The inimitable Michael Wolff stops by The Grill Room to discuss his new profile in New York magazine
of Warner Bros. Discovery C.E.O. David Zaslav. Wolff digs into Zaz’s head-spinning financial incentives, how he became an “accidental media mogul,” and the challenges WBD faces from tech giants like Amazon and Netflix. Then they speculate on the future of media businesses and CNN’s place in the shifting landscape.
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Lauren Sherman
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Lauren is joined by retail real estate guru Jonathan Schley to discuss some of the biggest fashion news of the week,
including the Prada Group’s $1.4 billion acquisition of Versace (is this an opportunity for more Miu Miu stores?) and how Trump’s tariffs might shake out across the retail landscape. They also dig into Glossier’s disappointing financials and the challenges of maintaining brand momentum post-Covid. Finally, Jonathan shares some advice for founder-led brands.
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Matthew Belloni
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Matt is joined by Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw to parse the media landscape and determine which companies are most vulnerable
amid the Trump tariff chaos. They discuss how much this volatility will cost the entertainment industry, who is best suited to weather the storm, and whether this will affect the cost of production. Matt finishes the show with a prediction about Saturday Night Live heading to the U.K.
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Peter Hamby
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John Ourand
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John Ourand joins Peter to discuss the many quirks surrounding Augusta National’s unique control over the Masters’
television rights, and the impact on broadcast viewers. Then they turn to the upcoming UFC rights negotiations, and whether the organization can find a suitor willing to double ESPN’s $500 million annual payment.
Listen Now
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_01JRX8D2JA60QPE9EC36HBHJJR.png "The Mike-and-Pam Respite & Ellison’s Strange Structure")
_01JRX8D24RV5BRPSWD09G82V9P.png "Key Performance Metrick")
_01JRX8D3EQ8EBAZJ0K61SVQP9Y.png "The General Theory of McAfee")
