Typing live and fast here – seeing some of the best lessons in a sports business league that starts today in Vegas called Enhanced Games, although derisively referred to as the “Doper Olympics” by the IOC.
The rules encourage the athletes to take performance-enhancing drugs.
Yep, and the bet is that the regulatory agencies act like enhanced drugs in competition are next to capital murder, but nobody else cares.
GLP-1 and peptides have reset the market minds.
So out of nowhere, German billionaire biotech entrepreneur Christian Angermayer co-founded the Enhanced Games with a ‘top of the funnel’1 business model that goes back to the WSM Barn Dance on a country radio station sponsored by the National Life & Accident Insurance Company. The weekly live radio broadcast premiered on Nov 28th, 1925 and changed to the Grand Ole Opera on Dec 10, 1927.
The big idea was to sell listeners life insurance.
Honestly, I’m more concerned about Enhanced Games’ business model than the drugs.
Peter Thiel, the Winklevoss twins, Saudi Prince Khalid, and Donald Trump Jr.’s 1789 Capital have all invested in the business.
Personally, when the twins and Don Jr. are in, I’m out, but it deserves a fair look as a top-of-the-funnel model.
Expenses – what’s going out of the cash register – in addition to spending $625,000 per month on stipends for the event’s 40+ athletes, the Enhanced Games spent about $20 million building a 2,500-seat arena for its inaugural event this weekend. That includes $6.6 million to build a 50-meter temporary pool, another $2 million for a six-lane track around it and $15 million in prize money.
Cash coming in – the media rights and all 2,500 tickets were given out for free — many industry insiders and sports fans are already calling it a disaster.
Whoa, Nellie! – Why then has Enhanced Games achieved a $1.2 billion valuation?
Because investors are betting it can be a DTC2 peptide/telehealth business that uses a steroid-friendly, Olympics-style event as its top-of-funnel marketing engine.
A big virtual GNC confab and a Botox factory with enough protein shakes to fill the dark matter in the Universe.
Roger Goodell, commissioner of NFL, called it “Pie in the Sky” as Netflix and Apple write him bigger deposits. Maybe that’s an under-estimated word. Deposits.
My opinion: not only pie in the sky, but it’s an entire floating bakery of cream horns. I’ve eaten my share of them. Sounds good on paper…leave.
All this is hard to figure out. And impossible when it starts in a deep hole and operating losses.
In this space, I like Chris Spears’ OrderlyMeds business model of zero to 100m, mostly a great website and marketing. I’m coming around to love LumiVita.
By the way, the bakery always bombs.
Hate Mail: A few financial advisors sent this:
“When will you say you were wrong on advice to pull assets from the market at the 4th week of the Iran war?” Market continues to climb.
Thanks for the email. This newsletter requires an 8th-grade reading comprehension level – I wrote, “I am pulling my assets to cash and AI stocks.” In the past, yes, I have clearly put out advisories – my move here was what I was doing and I would do it again 100x in a row.
If I miss a 10% stock market rally, my life doesn’t change. Right there next to peptides, who cares?
When the market is free to correct itself and 7 hedge funds pull the plug; a busted US federal treasury; wars across the globe; a broken, corrupt political system; massive societal displacement; water wars, and climate destruction—an 80% drop in the stock market stings like a snakebite if I am in it up to my eyeballs.
And in a caution flag to not follow my lead, I noted financial advisors would warn against me, and you do have history of “staying in on your side” – word for word my words.
And when the market does correct itself, you will eat that history of experience like Captain Edward John Smith on the Titanic, not seeing icebergs in front of your nose.
I’m somewhere between the Jack Dawson and Caledon Hockley characters, going for a girl and looking for a lifeboat.
Next Newsletter – Three entrepreneurs walk into a bar. You think I’m going to tell a joke, but I’m not. I was one of the 3 entrepreneurs when a guy sitting at the end of the bar said, “Get that sh!t out of here.” The packed bar became deathly quiet. Entrepreneurs don’t need motivational seminars. We need de-escalation skills a lot more, and every day. One word can flip a disaster into a dynamic moment.
Cliff Notes
1. A top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) business model focuses on generating broad brand awareness, capturing attention, and attracting prospects in the initial, educational phase of their journey. It prioritizes reach and engagement over immediate sales, using content and ads to solve prospect problems, build trust, and build an audience for later conversion.
2. Direct To Consumer.
