Take the money and run as far as you can with it...
First the good news in monopoly
www.levernews.com/… 12/3/2025
Youth hockey players at rinks associated with a corporate conglomerate can be immediately kicked off their team if any friends or family record their games, according to the current rulebooks for several leagues run by the hockey empire Black Bear Sports Group.
There’s nothing that compares to being punished for someone else’s conduct- no matter how innocent the conduct is.
What parent can resist the temptation to record their children playing in an organized youth sports league?
Whether its purpose is to make available to family members, who can’t attend the game, a chance to see their cousin, nephew or friend playing a game for the sheer enjoyment of playing, or to try to catch the attention of scouts looking for talented players and garner an opportunity to play their game at a higher level, it was prohibited by the private equity masters who can’t pass up a chance to monetize every aspect of youth sports.
As the $40 billion youth sports industry comes under private equity control, corporate-owned facilities and leagues — from hockey rinks to cheerleading arenas — have begun prohibiting parents from recording their own kids’ sports games.
Why do they do this?
www.levernews.com/… 11/18/2025
So they can force parents, including a sitting US Senator, into subscribing to the company’s exclusive recording and streaming service, at prices that are multiples of the streaming costs for professional sporting events.
In some instances, parents have been threatened that if they choose to defy the rules and record the game, they may end up on a blacklist that punishes their kids’ teams.
(snip)
“I was told this past weekend that if I livestreamed my child’s hockey game, my kid’s team will be penalized and lose a place in the standings,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) at a public event earlier this year. “Why is that? Because a private equity company has bought up the rinks.”
After vehemently denying that the company prohibited parents from recording their kids’ games, Black Bear Sports Group said they would revisit that policy, saying that they NEVER intended to keep parents from recording their children's feats on the ice.
Two days after The Lever’s original story on the matter — which triggered significant media attention — Black Bear released a statement asserting that while it prohibited “livestreaming” games online, “parents are always welcome to record videos and take photos of their own child during games and practices.”
Unfortunately for them, a contract between Black Bear Sports Group and an affiliated ice rink said different.
...rulebooks reviewed by The Lever for several leagues operated by Black Bear spell out the consequences for breaking those rules.
According to identical sections in the 2025-2026 rulebooks for the Atlantic Hockey Federation and the Tier 1 Hockey Federation, “If a player, parent, family member or friend produce (or any other version of such) a video or livestream or any other broadcast production of an AHF event or game, the PLAYER can be immediately suspended or dismissed from the team, league or tournament for the remainder of the season with no refunds provided.”
This rule has not always been in effect in the Atlantic Hockey Federation, a youth league for players aged eight to 18 formed in 2020 by a group of hockey organizations, including Black Bear. But, starting in the 2022-23 season, it appeared in the rulebook, after the role of commissioner passed from a hockey coach, unaffiliated with Black Bear, to Tony Zasowski, Black Bear’s vice president.
After The Lever asked Black Bear about the disconnect between its public statements and the language in its contracts and rulebooks prohibiting any form of recording, a spokesperson noted in an email that the company would be revising its materials to allow for “full game and practice recording.”
The spokesperson added, “We have never wanted to prevent families from capturing the most exciting moments of their children’s hockey journey and are committed to making sure our policies, contracts, rulebooks and the promises we are making to our families are always consistent.”
Now for the bad news in monopoly
www.thebignewsletter.com/… 12/5/2025
As you may have heard, Netflix won the bidding war for Warner Bros./Discovery with a $72 billion offer.
Warner Bros Discovery is one of five remaining major film studios and the third biggest streamer via HBO Max (after Netflix and Amazon Prime). It has a lot of great assets, including “franchises like DC’s superheroes, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Looney Tunes and Scooby-Doo. It is also the distributor of Legendary’s Dune franchise and Godzilla and King Kong films.” Warner Brothers has been sold multiple times in the last 30 years under the same premise that consolidation is necessary, and every single time the merger has been a failure.
While the other bidders (Comcast/Universal/NBC and Paramount/Skydance) are traditional studios and distributes their new releases into theaters nationwide, Netflix, by contrast, does not and only streams their their releases.
Netflix is the largest streaming service and is buying the third largest streaming service. One major threat of the merger is to put movie theaters out of business. Since the pandemic, movie theaters have been hanging on by the skin of their teeth and, since movie theaters need a minimum number of new releases to be profitable this merger threatens to push them over the edge. Previous mergers in the movie industry have reduced the number of theatric releases. The latest merger, the Fox/Disney merger demonstrates this trend.
Before Disney acquired 20th Century Fox in 2019, those two studios combined for an average of 24 wide release (1000+ theaters) films annually. Over the last three years, the merged studios have only released an average of 14 films annually – a 44% decline. In contrast, total output for the rest of the industry is roughly flat, with a small decline in output from the other major studios (Warner, Universal, Sony, Paramount, Lionsgate, and Amazon/MGM) offset by increased output from smaller studios (such as A24, Angel, Neon Rated, and Roadside Attractions).
In addition to the movie theater threat, another aspect of the Netflix/Warner Discovery merger is the fact that the vast library of assets that Warner/Discovery owns (and other streamers license to their platforms) will be locked up by Netflix in an market where prices are already increasing to consumers.
