The Weekly Listen: The WNBA’s record-breaking season, a new “click to cancel” rule, and more

On today's podcast episode, we discuss the numbers that summed up this year’s record breaking WNBA season the most, how TV’s biggest attraction (the NFL) is getting on, how a new “click to cancel” rule will change consumer behavior, how much store themed marketing can move the needle, what percentage of college athletes make it to the pros, and more. Tune in to the discussion with Senior Director of Podcasts and host Marcus Johnson, Principal Forecasting Writer Ethan Cramer-Flood, Senior Forecasting Analyst Zach Goldner, and Senior Director of Forecasting Oscar Orozco.

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Episode Transcript:

Marcus Johnson:

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Hello everyone and thanks for hanging out with us for Behind the Numbers Weekly listen, an eMarketer podcast made possible by TikTok. This is the Friday show that is apparently blaming Marcus for everything.

Oscar Orozco:

Yeah. He deserves it.

Marcus Johnson:

So Oscar, since it was my fault, his audio was off during setup, which I'm not responsible for at all, but he said it's because it's not been on in a long time. How many times have I invited you on in the past two months?

Oscar Orozco:

In way too long. Listen, maybe once.

Marcus Johnson:

You told me you had gymnastics class.

Oscar Orozco:

You're right. It's been about twice or three times.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

I'm with Oscar on this.

Marcus Johnson:

What? These Mets fans. Okay, who's a Mets fan here? Hand up.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

Not I.

Marcus Johnson:

No congratulations to my Dodgers. Very quiet on Slack recently.

Oscar Orozco:

That's true, Marcus.

Zach Goldner:

Do people still watch baseball?

Oscar Orozco:

Yes, Zach.

Marcus Johnson:

His team teams out of it, which is why he's not watching anymore.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

Spoiler alert for dinner party data coming up to answer that question, Zach.

Marcus Johnson:

Resident Dodgers fan. In today's show, the WNBA's record-breaking year. We check in on TV's biggest attraction, the NFL. How will the new click-to-cancel rule change consumers behavior? How much can store themed marketing move the needle? And what percentage of college players make it to the pros?

Join me for this episode. We have three people. Let's meet them. We start with our senior director of forecasting. He is based in New York. He's one of our Mets fans, unfortunately.

Oscar Orozco:

That's right.

Marcus Johnson:

We call him Oscar Orozco.

Oscar Orozco:

Here I am. Here I am. It's been a while, Marcus. Very happy to be back.

Marcus Johnson:

Yes, sir. Good to have you, mate. We're also joined by one of our senior forecasting analysts. He's based in Colorado. His name is Zach Goldner.

Zach Goldner:

Hey, Marcus. Happy to be on and unfortunately the reason I don't care about baseball is I was growing up a Chicago White Sox fan, so good time to bow out.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

Ouch.

Marcus Johnson:

Makes perfect sense. We're also joined by one of our principal forecasting writers. He is also based in New York City. We call him Ethan Cramer-Flood.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

It's ludicrous that I'm the only Yankees fan here. How is that statically possible?

Marcus Johnson:

You are Yankees fan. I didn't know that.

Oscar Orozco:

The arrogance. You hear this?

Marcus Johnson:

Would not have invited you.

Oscar Orozco:

Terrible.

Marcus Johnson:

Congratulations on the future win of the World Series. What do we have in store for you guys today?

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

If you say so.

Marcus Johnson:

I definitely do. As a Dodgers time, what are we? Four of the eight? Four of the last eight World series we've made, we won one, but that was a pandemic year. It doesn't count. Anyway, WNBA's record-breaking year. That's our story of the week. We then move to our game of the week, super-duper game. And we end with some random trivia. It's dinner party data. Let's get to it, folks. We start of course, the story of the week.

The WNBA's record-breaking year. Team owners, players and league leaders had been hoping and plotting for women's basketball to go supernova this year, they got their wish, writes Rachel Bachman of the Journal. With popular rookies, Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese entering the league, the Vegas Aces chasing a three-peat, and a US Women's Olympic basketball run mid-season, the WNBA had plenty of fascinating storylines to follow.

USA Today [inaudible 00:03:47] noted that after coming up on the losing end of five WNBA finals, the New York Liberty finally managed to capture their first championship, beating the Minnesota Lynx 67 to 62 in overtime of the decisive game five this past weekend at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. Viewership for this deciding game averaged 2.2 million folks, peaking at 3.3 during the broadcast. Its highest viewership in 25 years. Bearing in mind the league has only been around for 27, according to ESPN. That represents a 142% viewership increase over last season's game four clincher for the Las Vegas Aces over the Liberty notes Jason Owens of Yahoo Sports.

I'm going to start by playing a segment called Story by Numbers. It's a segment we have on our banking and payment show, which I stole. Thank you Rob for letting me borrow it. Ethan, I'll start with you as I believe a Liberty fan.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

Oh, absolutely.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah, you've been following. What number summed up this year's record-breaking WNBA season the most for you?

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

Well, I mean in my heart it's the number one, which is the number of titles that the Liberty now have.

Marcus Johnson:

There we go.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

What?

Marcus Johnson:

Here we go.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

It's also the number of absolutely ludicrously, terrible officiating calls that allowed them to get that championship, but I don't want to get into that because no one's going to remember. The point is we got a parade. That's all we wanted, and if there's a conspiracy involved in helping the New York team finally rise to the top, then I'm all in favor of that. That's a rite of passage for sports leagues. Once the league office and the officials are conspiring to help New York win, you know you got a real sport. That's what I like. That's my heart's answer.

More in line with our topic today. I mean, it's just the ratings, right? I mean the nugget that popped out of this article was it's been more than 15 years since any WNBA game got more than a million viewers, and this year it happened 22 times just in the regular season and we know that all of those finals games went flying way past that as well. Now, many of those regular season games were the Caitlin Clark effect, but not all of them. I mean there was success all across the board. There's lots of these franchises are popular and it's everyone's dream come true in terms of the attention that they're getting now.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah, she played in saying 19 of the 22 regular season games that pulled in over a million viewers. She was also basically drawing in over 2 million viewers for her games, which is more than many of the MLB matchups. Jeremy Goldman, who writes for our briefing was pointing that out. That's a good one. One million viewers multiple times this year. What about for you, Oscar? Which number jumped out the most?

Oscar Orozco:

Yeah, I mean I'm interpreting it a little bit different than Ethan there and I hate to be the Debbie Downer here, but you mentioned it a bit here.

Marcus Johnson:

This why you haven't been invited on.

Oscar Orozco:

This might be it, but you mentioned it yourself, it's the Caitlin Clarke effect, right? So there was another report, I think this was from Sports Media Watch that revealed that there were 13 games that broke the previous viewership record this season and 12 involved the Fever in some way. So to me that-

Marcus Johnson:

Who she plays for.

Oscar Orozco:

Yes, that's the team that Caitlin Clarke plays for. So to me that's really the data point or the metric that stands out for me. Also, if I were to add another one, the Indiana Fever they sold, there was an increase in, I believe over 180% in tickets sold. The WNBA saw an increase, it was up 44% when not counting those games. So it was up, but a lot of this has to do with Caitlin, so I have my doubts about just long-term, will this fizzle out or not, right? That's kind of where I'm standing here.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

I don't know about that, man.

Oscar Orozco:

44% year-on-year growth for a sport that's existed for over a decade, multiple decades. That is incredible growth.

Marcus Johnson:

It really is. I had 48% year-on-year increase in fan attendance. WNBA averaged about 6,600 fans per game in 2023. That jumped to nearly 10,000 per game this year and there was a Reuters article also noting WNBA teams combined for 154 sellouts this season after having just 45 last season. Two times as many.

Oscar Orozco:

I mean there's some great stats here and we've heard and seen so many of them over the last few months since the Women's NCAA tournament, but I do hope, and it could be that sort of Caitlin Clark will be that Michael Jordan figure right in the early, mid-80s and the impact he had on the NBA, then we've just seen the NBA take off from there. But I don't know. I also think a little bit about some of the divisive narratives we've seen this year, a lot of the media pinning Caitlyn against some of her rivals in a negative way and I feel like that's what's helped to keep the league in the headlines through the summer. So there's some work to be done, I think on the WNBA side to keep players marketable and to keep the game growing and positive stories around the league period.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

I don't think that's only upside though because I mean Oscar, you said this might still be heavily a Caitlyn Clark effect, but who cares? She's a rookie. I mean there's going to be 15 more years of this at minimum. I mean there's still a LeBron James effect in the NBA. I just saw some statistics that when he participates in a playoff series or the NBA finals, it changes the ratings considerably and obviously in regular season games, but he never leaves. It's like she's going to be here for a long, long, long time and it's all going to grow up around her. We're going to be having this conversation 15 years from now and by then it's going to be like, well, it's no longer a Caitlyn Clark effect. That's clearly the whole league.

Oscar Orozco:

Let's hope.

Marcus Johnson:

We talked about some averages. There are also some more records in terms of fan attendance, 20,000 fans in attendance for three WNBA games, including a single season record, 20,711. That's higher than obviously the 10,000 average that I said it was this year. So Caitlyn Clark, Indiana Fever, they played Washington Mystics, that was the record, a number of folks in the building, 20,711 on September 19th. The other two 20,000 fan games also involve the Fever, one against Vegas, another one against the Mystics. 20,000 is more than the average NBA game pulled in last year, about 18,000 a season. So her games are pulling in more folks than would typically go to an NBA game, which is just staggering.

Oscar Orozco:

Impressive.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

The Liberty also don't have any of these hot shot rookies, right? A lot of the rookies, people that came, Angel Reese and Caitlyn Clark and the whole cohort that brought all this energy and excitement. But the Liberty, it's Breanna Stewart, Jonquel Jones and Sabrina Ionescu, they're all veterans, multi-time MVPs, multi-time champions, first time for Sabrina and the Liberty. But their finals with the Lynx got millions of viewers and none of these hot shot rookies were playing in that series and now the Liberty is a champ and they'll be here all next year and still doing their thing. So I don't think they need Caitlyn or Angel Reese or anybody else.

Marcus Johnson:

And someone had said it, put it this way, I forget who it was, but basically saying that people came for Caitlyn but stayed for the plethora of other players that they ended up following. You mentioned a bunch of them. You also had Napheesa Collier playing just out of her mind for the Lynx, pulling them to the finals. A'ja Wilson two-time WNBA champion-

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

The actual multi-time MVP.

Marcus Johnson:

Exactly. Plays for the Vegas Aces. She's captivated fans attention since she joined the league in 2018. She set single season records this year for scoring average, 27 a game. Total points over a thousand, and total rebounds, nearly 500 and got her third MVP unanimously. So there have been folks who have been building this and then what folks like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese have done to inject a new wave of excitement into the WNBA has just been remarkable. Interestingly enough, Caitlin's jersey number 22 is the same as A'ja's jersey number 22, so that was going to be the number that summed up the year for me is number 22. There must be something going on there. It's like the 23 of the NBA with Michael and LeBron both wearing the same number. Zach, was there any other numbers that jumped out to you, mate?

Zach Goldner:

Yeah, 120,000, that is the average salary of the WNBA player. Angel Reese spoke on that and her rookie salary of $74,000 not being able to cover any of her bills. In comparison, the NBA average salary is at 9.7 million for the last season-

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

Oh my God.

Zach Goldner:

Increase up to 11.9 million for the next season. And why do I mention this? No, I'm not trying to demean or put down these athletes, but instead I want to talk about how this has been a really pivotal year for the WNBA to help them leverage themselves to get a higher compensation. So a day after the WNBA Championship, the big headline on ESPN is a holdout. There's already talks of a lockout happening for next year and this is as the WNBA Players Association is going to try to leverage themselves for a much better CBA contract. And if you were to put then... How much money is at stake? Well, just in the last few months there had been 11 year media rights deal that had been worked out with Amazon Prime, NBC and Disney worth $200 million annually. So there's going to be a lot more money at stake. People are going to make more money from their contracts and sponsorships and hopefully these athletes won't have to go overseas any longer to try to generate more revenue streams in their off months.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah, that jumped out to me as well. $200 million and that was their new media rights deal. WNBA just landed 200 million, not much when compared to the $76 billion deal that the NBA just secured. However, it is 233% more than the previous $60 million agreement. So it is a lot more in context of that and it is up for a renewal at least in 2028 if not sooner, because of this explosion of popularity around the league. But as you mentioned, it's just so much further behind what the men are making that it's definitely going to be a topic of conversation going forward.

All right gents, that's all we've got time for the story of the week. Congratulations again to the New York Liberty on your first championship. Time now for the game of the week. Today's game, the super-duper game. How does it work? Three rounds. Today we have fill in the blank, the random scale and move the needle. The better the answers, the more points you get. Pretty straightforward.

For round one we have fill in the blank where folks do it, they do that. Checking in on TV's biggest attraction, the NFL season. The league kicked off the 2024 season with a huge ratings win, noted Saleah Blancaflor of Adweek. Viewership of the opening game of the season, we saw the Baltimore Ravens lose to the Kansas City Chiefs, averaged close to 49 million viewers, according to AdImpact, peaking at 56 million during the game. Last year's season opener between the Kansas City Chiefs and Detroit Lions drew an average of 40 million viewers. So this year marking an 18% increase in average viewership, Ms. Blancaflor points out. We'll start with Ethan. Fill in the blank. The NFL season this year has been blank.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

The NFL season this year has been as expected. This is what they do. I mean they knock it out of the park. I'm not surprised that number is ridiculous. 40 whatever million. It's ridiculous, but it's not that ridiculous for the NFL and you mentioned Kansas City was involved in both of those games. That Thursday night game was simulcast on regular TV, broadcast TV, not just cable and on Peacock and on YouTube TV, NFL package, which seems... I mean that's the sweet spot actually. It seems like this is the kind of numbers they can achieve when they put those games up everywhere. So the average Thursday game that is only on Amazon is not going to do those kinds of numbers, but when you get Kansas City and then you get it out there in every possible way, these are the kind of numbers that they're going to do.

Marcus Johnson:

Genuine question. I am wondering what happens to the numbers if Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift break up? Because when she's in the building-

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

She was in the building.

Marcus Johnson:

We saw with the Super Bowl, numbers are higher, so I do wonder what kind of an impact that has on viewership.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

I feel like I should get credit for not having brought that up and then you just-

Oscar Orozco:

Marcus.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

Did it anyway.

Marcus Johnson:

Big fan.

Zach Goldner:

Someone always needs to put that in the broadcast.

Oscar Orozco:

It's not Taylor. It's not Taylor, let's move on.

Marcus Johnson:

Oscar, which word would you say sums up this year's NFL season so far?

Oscar Orozco:

I mean, as a fan it's been thrilling. It's been thrilling. I mean, to just Ethan's points, which is just the power. There was a quote from Don Norton from AdImpact there, just talking about the NFL as the media property, and we talk about this a lot, but the power they have is incredible and I think all of the streaming platforms are benefiting from this even though consumers are complaining about having to subscribe to many... But it's been thrilling just because there's no clear favorite as well. That's part of what makes the NFL so exciting.

Marcus Johnson:

No clear favorite?

Oscar Orozco:

I mean I don't think there is.

Marcus Johnson:

Watch the Chiefs.

Oscar Orozco:

I think Mahomes is pretty mediocre.

Zach Goldner:

They're 7 and 0, but how many of those wins are by help of the refs?

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

They're garbage.

Oscar Orozco:

I wasn't even going to go there.

Marcus Johnson:

The refs again.

Oscar Orozco:

But I think there's always multiple teams in the running and it's a long season.

Marcus Johnson:

That's true.

Oscar Orozco:

But to me it's been thrilling. A quick thing though, as a fantasy football team owner, it's been painful though.

Marcus Johnson:

Team owner.

Oscar Orozco:

A lot of injuries, too many injuries.

Marcus Johnson:

No one cares about how bad you're doing in fantasy football. I told you, hire me-

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

Let's not go down [inaudible 00:18:38].

Oscar Orozco:

I hear about it every day.

Marcus Johnson:

[inaudible 00:18:39].

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

This is good podcasting. This is what the people want to hear about.

Marcus Johnson:

That was a terrible answer. Zach, what you got?

Oscar Orozco:

[inaudible 00:18:45], had to say.

Zach Goldner:

I've got that this NFL season is full of young blood. Fans of rookie QBs rejoice, especially us Bears fans. This year, Bears have Caleb Williams being exhilarating, but there have been three rookie quarterbacks with winning records thus far. It's the first time ever since the NFL merger. So if you were [inaudible 00:19:07] about, Caleb Williams, of course the number one overall pick. The number two overall pick, Jayden Daniels has the Washington Commanders-

Marcus Johnson:

Killing it.

Zach Goldner:

At 5 and 2. And then Denver's Bo Nix is at 4 and 3. Now we're even starting to see more rookie quarterbacks take the field like the Patriots Drake Maye and Saints quarterback Spencer Rattler. So I think we're seeing a whole new generation of quarterbacks and hopefully this draft class is going to be better than the 2021 draft class of Trevor Lawrence, Justin Fields, Mac Jones and so on. So we can only go up from there.

Oscar Orozco:

I'm not so sure about that one.

Zach Goldner:

Zach Wilson, Trey Lance, there are a lot of rough names in that.

Marcus Johnson:

It's a tough year. Yeah, the NFL just seems to be getting a more popular. The ratings for the season suggest that, but also in part because of its marquee final. So last year's Super Bowl, Paramount's broadcast reached 124 million viewers on average, making it the most watched telecast ever. According to Nielsen, up 7% from the year before. Viewership has been above 100 million every year for the last decade. It's been going up each of the last three years recovering from the pandemic drop where it was still over 100 million. So that helps. It's also getting more popular abroad. I thought this was fascinating. Our briefing's writer Daniel Konstantinovich recently noting that the NFL wants to expand the international series from five games this year to eight next year and then to a full 16 game season according to Front Office Sports, and a bid to increase the sport's international popularity and secure another lucrative foreign rights package. The NFL said, "Global Super Bowl viewership jumped 10% year-on-year to nearly 63 million in 2024."

All right folks, let's move to our second round. Round two is the random scale. Now folks, have to tell me where they land using the random scale. Canceling subscriptions has to be as easy as signing up, writes Alina Selyukh of NPR. She explains a new cryptocurrency rule from the FTC will require retailers, gyms, and other businesses to make canceling subscriptions as easy as enrolling in them and to make the subscription process more transparent. Online subscriptions will require the same number of clicks to end as they do to sign up and in-person signups must have an option to cancel online or on the phone. The NPR piece notes that the FTC will have more power to help consumers get their money back from violating companies. Most of the new requirements will go into effect around next spring.

We'll start with Oscar for the random scale. Question is, how will the new click to cancel rule change consumers behavior? Your possible choices are, people are lazy, nothing will change. Folks may shed a few subscriptions. Or get ready for a new wave of churn.

Oscar Orozco:

Well, this is a good one, Marcus. I think, well I expect that the three of us are going to disagree on this one, but you all know I'm a cynic at heart. For me it's an easy one. People are lazy, nothing will change. Let's be honest here, nothing's going to change. I actually think this seems a little bit like an election cycle, like a wedge issue I think it's called where it's not really something consumers care about, but politicians can talk about it at the right time and it's just divisive enough and I think that's really what this is. I honestly think the most meaningful impact is actually and if it were to work this way, that the FTC has more power to get money back for consumers, more so that than the actual cancellation process, which I don't think is that big of an issue.

Marcus Johnson:

Interesting. Okay, Zach, how about you?

Zach Goldner:

Marcus, if I will, I'm going to strongly disagree with Oscar. I'm taking the, get ready for a new wave of churn. Oscar, I know you're still a linear TV user, so you've probably never tried to call up one of those companies-

Oscar Orozco:

The insults.

Zach Goldner:

To try canceling your subscription, but that is a headache. It's a headache for every consumer out there that tries to cancel anything from their gym membership to like Fabletics to your TV, it is a headache and a half. They go through every loophole they can to make it so, it's a time-consuming process. You have to talk to numerous representatives. You can't do it online. Let's just make it as easy to cancel as it is to sign up. There is a business of itself to get people to not cancel.

And I've got a bunch of data points. The subscription economy has grown six times faster than the S&P 500 over the last decade. There are things called zombie subscriptions where people just don't know that they're continuing to pay for services that they don't use. There's roughly 75% of consumers who have at least one subscription that they have no idea about and thought they may have canceled it but hadn't. And those just keep ramping up. And there's a reason why more companies are changing away from a one-time purchase to more of a subscription model, and that's because it's a recurring revenue stream that a lot of people forget to cancel or have such a hard time canceling that they don't do it at all.

Oscar Orozco:

Let me rebuttal this really quickly. All of those stats are great, Zach.

Marcus Johnson:

This is not how this thing works.

Oscar Orozco:

This regulation is not going to help with that. It comes down to the individual consumer doing it. A lot of those people are too messy and don't even realize they're subscribed to things. I don't think this is going to help with that. Just my take.

Marcus Johnson:

Ethan, where'd you land?

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

Yeah, that's actually a fair point by Oscar that the zombie subscriptions are... That's the individual's responsibility and I don't have a lot of sympathy for these folks because they're just foolish enough to not even realize this is happening. But I'll happily go down the middle on this. What did you say, folks may shed a few subscriptions? I'll take the middle point because I was actually leaning a little bit towards Zach's point that... I mean I've gone through it. These gyms that require you to actually go in person to cancel, it's not even that they want to stop you from canceling ever, it's just they want to delay it and make it more challenging. They grab another month worth of fees from you and you see this happening with your digital subscriptions as well. So I think that this will move the needle a little bit for the folks that get frustrated, this kind of thing and make it easier.

But my cynical angle that Oscar didn't mention, I'll do a little cynicism with him is not so much on the consumer side. It's on these providers and the way in which they will inevitably spend the next year or two finding loopholes and finding ways to sort of falsely comply and new ways to make... They'll find a way to comply with the letter of the law but not the spirit and there will be new challenges. Because this is a big part of their business model is finding a way to make it hard or confusing or whatever and whatever they have to do to sort of find a new way to make it difficult, they will. So that's why I don't think we're going to have an entirely new wave of churn because they'll find some way to get around this.

Marcus Johnson:

The evidence against online services is quite damning. Our tech and AI analyst, Grace Harmon was noting that there was a market letters study of 40 popular online services platforms which found, and you can see that on the screen here, found that on average it takes 18 clicks to sign up for an account and 27 clicks to delete an account. So a number of clicks to sign up are along the side here. Number of clicks to cancel along the bottom. She was pointing to Amazon, one in particular, an Amazon account can be created in 10 clicks but requires 56 clicks to cancel.

Oscar Orozco:

It's pretty fascinating. It is much higher than I thought, to be quite frank.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah, it's also interesting because this also covers free trials that charge you if you don't cancel in time. So I wonder how much of an effect that has. But there is one thing that was taken out of the law before it was passed, was the rule saying that companies had to send annual reminders to people about recurring charges, that was scratched before this got passed. So you won't see that in here.

Let's move to our final round, round three. Start with Zach for this one. It's called Move the Needle, where folks tell me how much this story will move the needle out of 10 and we're talking about a Wicked-Target store takeover. So Targets partnered on a national marketing campaign with the upcoming Universal Pictures to film adaptation of the Tony Award-winning musical Wicked in theaters November 22nd, writes David Cohen of Adweek. The campaign includes social clips of Cynthia Erivo who plays Elphaba shopping in Target. Also, there's over 100 new and exclusive Target and Wicked collaboration products and a Target website makeover featuring green and pink motifs and themed animations. In addition to that, on November 3rd, a Target store in Jersey City, New Jersey will be transformed into the Land of Oz with giveaways, installations, photo opportunities and themed experiences, notes Mr. Cohen. Zach, the question is how much can store themed marketing move the needle out of 10?

Zach Goldner:

Yeah, I give this story right here, a 7 out of 10. I think it's more effective than not, but in this case I see it as a win-win for both the retailer and for the box office. In one end you have Target that gets to tap into a major Hollywood release and anytime a retailer can get into and dial in with a big pop culture moment, it's going to create buzz for them, which will eventually generate foot traffic and online engagement. And then once people are actually in the store, they're going to be more likely to make purchases. It's not just going to be the movie merch, but it's going to be other things that Target might have for sale. Then on the other hand, of course it's going to drive more awareness for the movies themselves. I think Wicked might see a bump up in box office sales from it.

Marcus Johnson:

Interesting. Ethan.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

I don't know if it's a 7. It depends on what we're talking about moving the needle. So they compared it to what happened with Barbie in terms of this massive comprehensive marketing campaign involving lots of stuff everywhere and lots of visuals everywhere. But in reality, at least in terms of ticket sales, the movie has to be good. That you can do as much as you want, but... I mean the reason Barbie made a billion is not because of what a good job they did marketing. It's because once the movie actually came out, it was excellent and everybody talked about it and it built up all this buzz and all this momentum.

So this kind of stuff on the box office side can only help you so much. But Zach's right. What's smart about it is that this isn't just about promoting the movie. This is about selling stuff and it's like the lead up to Halloween. This is perfect, right? It's the middle of October, they're rolling this stuff out and the movie doesn't even come up for another month. So they're going to be able to get a lot of benefit, a lot of mutual success back and forth. And then even if the movie bombs, you probably accomplished some retail sales, at least in the meantime.

Marcus Johnson:

Oscar who was grimacing in pain because he hates the Barbie film. It's a terrible take.

Oscar Orozco:

It wasn't very good. It wasn't very good-

Marcus Johnson:

Worse than your [inaudible 00:30:25] take.

Oscar Orozco:

To Ethan's point, yes, the movie needs to be quite good or at least people need to perceive it that way. I guess that's what happened with Barbie, but let me give my number here. It's a 9 out of 10. Yes.

Marcus Johnson:

Wow.

Oscar Orozco:

Maybe it's because it's timely for me. I've actually just recently been reading about experiential retail marketing or retail-tainment and I think it's a brilliant marketing strategy. I really do. And I think the biggest beneficiary is the mass merchant retailer. Here Target is the example. I don't think many stores could actually handle something like this, a Walmart, Target. So I think it's huge for them. I think it's a great tactic for marketing to kids and to families. And my last thought was, I'm so excited about that Harry Potter series that's coming out in 2026, I believe. So I'm wondering who Warner Brothers Discovery will partner with then.

Marcus Johnson:

Interesting.

Zach Goldner:

A broom store.

Marcus Johnson:

That was terrible. We'll probably cut it. I mean, Ethan to your point, the right partnerships are going to have the greatest impacts and I think the Wicked partnership to what you were saying does play really well into Target's Halloween shopping season. So the time of it is fantastic from that standpoint.

All right, let's count the scores. This week's winner is not Oscar because he was ranting about fantasy football and how bad it's going. So it is instead Zach, is this week's winner of the game of the week. Seven for him. Ethan with six. Oscar with five.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

You offered no scoring updates throughout the course of the pod.

Marcus Johnson:

[inaudible 00:32:04].

Zach Goldner:

What's the methodology here?

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

[inaudible 00:32:07] Liberty game five. They just decided [inaudible 00:32:09].

Zach Goldner:

Glad my off-season has been paying off.

Marcus Johnson:

It paid off Zach. Congratulations.

Zach Goldner:

[inaudible 00:32:13].

Marcus Johnson:

The champion of the game of the week. You get the belt and the last word.

Zach Goldner:

Go Bears. That's all I got. Go Bears.

Oscar Orozco:

This is who we handing out wins to?

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah, no, I apologize. Congratulations, Ethan, well played. You win. Let's move now to dinner party data.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

Wait. I threw the challenge flag-

Marcus Johnson:

Reverse the call.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

And they were like, "We're going to actually review this properly unlike that game on Sunday."

Marcus Johnson:

This is the part of the show where we tell you about the most interesting thing we've learned this week. And even though Ethan won on technicality. Zach, you kind of won, so you can go first.

Zach Goldner:

For my dinner party data, I just want to say that I've been on a movie kick binge lately. I don't know about you guys, but it's coming. Sweater season, soup season and movie season. I've been on a little bit of a movie kick lately, so I saw some data that talked about the ratings disparities between men and women for different films. So this list goes over the rank that women give a film versus a man and the biggest disparities between them. So on the woman's side, at the top you have four of the five best ranked movies were among the Harry Potter series. You also had Pride and Prejudice and Frozen. So really interesting to see that women ranked Harry Potter around number 100 best film versus men who put it closer to like 700, 800 as aggregate. Versus men, normally put war movies and things of that nature to like Das Boot was number one. You have The Thing, Blade Runner, love gory action films. I think guys like that. Women like to stay home. So find your movies for fall.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

I saw that chart. I know exactly what you're talking about, but it's ridiculous. Blade Runner and Harry Potter are both awesome.

Marcus Johnson:

Is it? I don't get the Harry Potter thing.

Oscar Orozco:

I'm not sure where I sit in this.

Marcus Johnson:

There I said it.

Oscar Orozco:

That's an interesting one.

Marcus Johnson:

Unpopular opinion. Ethan, you're up next.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

As some folks may know that New York Yankees are about to start playing in the World Series just momentarily when you're listening to this podcast. So I took it upon myself to investigate what kind of ratings might be possible given that the Yankees are in fact playing the Los Angeles Dodgers. And one can imagine that although a lot of the country is probably just absolutely miserable at this matchup, the TV people are delighted and they should be. So I've checked out the ratings for all of the World Series to see how they've been doing recently and what this might do for it.

And of course no surprises. It's been pretty terrible in the modern era. I mean this is the case for everything, other than the NFL, the numbers go down. But the World Series has had, although last year was worse than 9 million viewers for the World Series last year on average per game, which is the worst of all time, but they have had some good showings recently in this century. We can't really compare it to old school, but in this century, there were three or four times when the World Series did extraordinarily well. I don't want to put you guys on the spot, but if you can think of... I bet you actually guess the two or three times in the last 25 years when the World Series did just banger numbers.

Zach Goldner:

My quick guess is the Cubs.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

That's a really good guess.

Zach Goldner:

[inaudible 00:35:50] a long time.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

That's a really good guess.

Marcus Johnson:

The Sox.

Oscar Orozco:

Red Sox, right?

Marcus Johnson:

Red Sox.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

And the Red Sox, you got it. The most successful World series of this century was that Red Sox series in 2004. This was a long time ago. There was less competition with 25 million people were watching that on average. The second best one was also way back then, that Yankees-Diamondback series, which some people think is the greatest World Series that ever played. Also, again, 24 years ago, less competition. But the third most successful, 23 million people on average was that Cubs one, which is only six years ago. And then my final data point. So it was like, what are we doing now? We got Yankees, Dodgers. This is the 12th time the Yankees and Dodgers have played, but it is like the 19... It's been 50 years or whatever.

So I go back in time, what is the most successful World Series of all time? Yankees-Dodgers, 45 million people in the late 70s. So where will this get us? Is it possible now that this Yankees-Dodgers series with Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge, will it do? It's going to obliterate NBA finals numbers. Will it achieve NFL type numbers? I think maybe. At 25 million, 30 million. That's NFL type numbers. So let's find out.

Marcus Johnson:

All right, very nice. Well, best of luck to the Yankees people, but I hope you get smashed to pieces by my Dodgers. Zach, you're up.

Zach Goldner:

I already went.

Oscar Orozco:

Oscar.

Marcus Johnson:

You went ready? Then no more from you.

Oscar Orozco:

See what I'm dealing with here?

Zach Goldner:

No more facts for you.

Marcus Johnson:

You're done. Oscar, you're up apparently.

Oscar Orozco:

Ridiculous. Best stats of the night upcoming here.

Marcus Johnson:

After you, yes.

Oscar Orozco:

Marcus, you told us to bring something spicy and that's exactly what I did, my friend.

Marcus Johnson:

I didn't say that.

Oscar Orozco:

Literally, I wanted listeners to know more about spicy food because I love it. So I brought some spicy facts for you guys. So you know how humans experience five big flavors, right? Sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami. Contrary to popular belief, spicy is not one of those. So spicy is actually a sensation, not a flavor, which I didn't realize. It's kind of fascinating.

Another two more for you. So these types of chilies actually originated in Brazil. So before Christopher Columbus pillaged the new world, we associate it with Southeast Asian cuisine, chili peppers. But that region didn't actually have them until substantially later. So after the late 1400s.

Lastly, and you guys can chime in here, there was a Tums... Of course they did. They conducted a poll, asked 5,000 Americans which state had the spiciest cuisine. Can anyone guess what that state was? Anyone?

Zach Goldner:

Not Iowa.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

Texas.

Oscar Orozco:

Iowa. No, not Iowa. Definitely not. Close Ethan, not Texas. It was actually Louisiana.

Marcus Johnson:

Oh, man.

Zach Goldner:

Lots of hot sauces there.

Oscar Orozco:

Second. Yeah.

Zach Goldner:

Shout out Crystal.

Oscar Orozco:

Great food down there. Great food down there. So yeah, spicy facts. That's it for me.

Marcus Johnson:

We should have just had Zach do a second one.

Zach Goldner:

That was incredible. My shout-out was to the Bears. I could have added on [inaudible 00:39:12].

Marcus Johnson:

Okay, maybe not.

Zach Goldner:

Six in one fantasy football team.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

Stop it.

Marcus Johnson:

All right, I've got one for you real quick. So just a combination of all the sports happening at the same time, the one time in the year when you've got a bit of everything. WNBA finals just finished, the NBA just started this week. The MLB, obviously the World Series is upon us. NFL has been going for a little while. Did hockey... No one cares really.

Oscar Orozco:

It started.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

Yeah, hockey's going. Come on.

Marcus Johnson:

Okay, three people [inaudible 00:39:42]. So I was wondering what percentage of college players make it to the pros? This is according to NCAA figures. So a few things for you. Only about 7% of high school student athletes end up competing in the NCAA, of those that make it, less than 2% of high school athletes receive athletic scholarships to compete in the NCAA division one and two sports, which I thought was shockingly low.

Oscar Orozco:

I thought it'd be higher. There's so many sports.

Marcus Johnson:

Right?

Oscar Orozco:

Yeah.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah. 2% of high school athletes getting scholarships to play sports. There are around 500,000 NCAA student athletes across all of the different 1, 2, 3. But across the 350 division one schools, there are about 180,000 student athletes. So what are student athletes chances of making the pros? Across all NCAA sports, just... Any guesses?

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

I mean, there's not even an opportunity to go pro for a lot of these sports. So that's got to be infinitesimally small.

Zach Goldner:

Half a percent.

Marcus Johnson:

These are for sports that you can go pro in.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

Oh, okay. Less than 1%, I would say.

Zach Goldner:

[inaudible 00:41:02] two percenter.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah, spot on. Pretty much just 2% of men and women student athletes made the pros. So it's about 3,500 young people split across basketball, football, baseball, ice hockey, and soccer. By sport, college athletes had the lowest chance of making the pros in men's and women's basketball and ice hockey. With just 1% of NCAA players making it to the NBA, WNBA or NHL. No one cares about. Or baseball playing students had the highest chance of making the pros at 9%.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

Whoa.

Marcus Johnson:

I wonder if they're counting making the pros as being the minors like you're in... You kind got [inaudible 00:41:44] down-

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

And they should.

Oscar Orozco:

Probably.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

I was thinking about that for basketball too, because between the G league and the European leagues, there are actually more jobs out there. So it depends on how you cut this data. Still very small number.

Oscar Orozco:

Marcus, please share this with me later. I'd love to check this out.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah, will do. One final thing for me. So if you look at the going from high school all the way to the pros, of the 1.1 million kids who play high school football each year, just 1,000 of them will make the pros. So if you counted out 799 kids who play football in high school, they wouldn't make it. The next one in line would. And even if they made the NFL, doesn't guarantee that they'll play. And even if they do, the average NFL career is three and a half years. So what I'm trying to say is don't bother with sports.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

Don't bother-

Zach Goldner:

Stay in school and make [inaudible 00:42:30] money.

Oscar Orozco:

Lottery tickets.

Marcus Johnson:

Waste of time.

Zach Goldner:

Make [inaudible 00:42:32] money.

Marcus Johnson:

That's the way to go.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

Don't play football. Play another one.

Zach Goldner:

Please don't play football.

Marcus Johnson:

That's what we got time for for today's episode. Thank you so much to my guest as always. Thank you to Oscar.

Oscar Orozco:

Thanks for having me, Marcus.

Marcus Johnson:

Yes, sir. Thank you to Ethan.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

Let's go, Yankees.

Marcus Johnson:

Thank you. No. Thank you to Zach.

Zach Goldner:

Appreciate it. Ready for basketball to start.

Marcus Johnson:

And thanks of course to Victoria who edits the show, Stuart who runs the team, Sophie who does our social media, and Lance who runs our video podcast. Thanks to everyone for listening to the Behind the Numbers Weekly listen, an eMarketer podcast made possible by TikTok. You can of course tune in Monday for Around the World Show, hosted by our Bill Fisher, where he'll be speaking with Jennifer Pearson, Paul Briggs, and Jason Manda from GWI, talking all about the biggest media trends happening around the world. Happiest of weekends.

On November 1st, eMarketer is hosting a virtual summit. You can learn all about the top trends of 2025 with a keynote from analysts, Sarah Marzano and Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf. Panels hosted by analysts Kelsey Voss and Yuri Wormser, and featuring executives from top brands. All of this starts at 11:30 a.m. Eastern on November 1st, and is hosted by eMarketer's Vice President of Content, Susie David Canyon, and Senior Director of Client Briefings, Jeremy Goldman. Use the link in the show notes to register today.