- Adult Swim devs say WB is reverting ownership of games back to them Game Developer
- Warner Bros. has decided not to take its ball and go home with Adult Swim Games, instead returning control to their original developers PC Gamer
- Warner Bros. are returning some Adult Swim-published Steam store pages to their developers after all Rock Paper Shotgun
- Indie developer says Warner Bros isn’t forcibly delisting his game after all: “Ownership and store listings will return to me” Gamesradar
- Warner Bros. reverses course, won’t delist Adult Swim indie games, devs say Polygon
Tag Archives: Ownership
Dwayne Johnson Secures Ownership Rights to 25 Names and Catchphrases, Including ‘Rock Nation’ and ‘Candy Ass,’ Under Agreement With WWE’s Parent – Variety
- Dwayne Johnson Secures Ownership Rights to 25 Names and Catchphrases, Including ‘Rock Nation’ and ‘Candy Ass,’ Under Agreement With WWE’s Parent Variety
- Dwayne Johnson Now Owns the IP Rights to “Jabroni” Hollywood Reporter
- Sucks to be you, Vin Diesel: Dwayne Johnson now owns the copyright on “candy ass” The A.V. Club
- Dwayne Johnson now owns IP rights to ‘The Rock’ name and several taglines. See full list USA TODAY
- You Can Call Him Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson — Or ‘Jabroni’ And ‘Candy Ass’ Deadline
Comcast, Disney move up deadline to decide Hulu future ownership – CNBC
- Comcast, Disney move up deadline to decide Hulu future ownership CNBC
- Disney and Comcast move up Hulu deal date to September 30 Yahoo Finance
- Comcast and Disney Move Up Hulu Sale Talks Date to Sept. 30, Roberts Claims Hulu Worth Well More Than $30 Billion Variety
- Hulu Stake Sale Kickoff Moved Up To September, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts Reveals; Valuation For “Scarce, Kingmaker Asset” Likely To Far Exceed Initial $27.5B Benchmark Deadline
- Comcast CEO Talks Hulu Stake Sale, Disney-Charter Showdown Hollywood Reporter
- View Full Coverage on Google News
DeSantis signs crackdown on TikTok, foreign land ownership in Florida – USA TODAY
- DeSantis signs crackdown on TikTok, foreign land ownership in Florida USA TODAY
- Florida bans Chinese citizens from buying land: ‘We don’t want the CCP in the Sunshine State,’ DeSantis says Fox News
- DeSantis bans ‘Chinese agents’, citizens of other ‘countries of concern’ from buying real estate in Florida New York Post
- DeSantis signs bills limiting Chinese land ownership, TikTok at schools South China Morning Post
- DeSantis Signs Bill Banning ‘Countries of Concern’ From Buying Land, Property in Florida NBC 6 South Florida
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Sean Payton denies report of concerns with unnamed member of Broncos ownership
As some wonder whether former Saints coach Sean Payton will wait to return to coaching until 2024, he has spoken out in response to a report regarding one of his potential destinations for 2023.
Mark Maske of the Washington Post tweeted the following on Thursday: “[T]here was an issue with Payton’s interview with the Broncos. Payton likes the idea of coaching Russell Wilson and having that defense but fears a potential power struggle with a member of the ownership group, source says.”
Maske did not name the member of the ownership group about whom Payton supposedly has concerns. Limited partner Condi Rice was directly involved in the first round of interviews, along with CEO and owner Greg Penner. The other primary owners involved in the hiring process are Rob Walton and Carrie Walton Penner.
Said Payton in response to Maske’s report: “Zero truth to this. We had a great visit and [Broncos] ownership was fantastic!!”
Payton has drawn interest from the Broncos, Texans, Cardinals, and Panthers. This week, a sense has emerged that he’s likely to return to Fox for another year, and to re-enter the market in 2024.
If that happens, the reason won’t be (according to Payton himself) that Payton fears a potential power struggle with an unnamed member of the Denver ownership group.
Arte Moreno to maintain ownership of Angels after exploring sale
Citing “unfinished business,” Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno has decided that his team is no longer for sale, a change of heart that shocked the industry and surprised many throughout the organization.
On Monday afternoon, five months after essentially announcing plans to move on, Moreno released a 132-word statement that read, in part: “[A]s discussions advanced and began to crystallize, we realized our hearts remain with the Angels, and we are not ready to part ways with the fans, players, and our employees.”
Moreno, 76, purchased the Angels from The Walt Disney Company for $183.5 million in 2003, the year after the first and only championship in franchise history, and watched the team skyrocket in value over the ensuing years. Forbes valued the Angels at $2.2 billion in March of 2022. A potential sale was widely predicted to net somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.5 billion. Golden State Warriors majority owner Joe Lacob and Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong had been rumored to be among those interested, with a sale expected in the coming months.
But a source familiar with Moreno’s thinking said that as the process continued to play out and a potential sale moved into the late stages, Moreno found it increasingly difficult to part with a franchise he has presided over for two decades. It’s also possible that prospective buyers didn’t meet Moreno’s asking price, though the source disputed that notion.
In a statement, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred wrote: “Despite strong buyer interest in the Angels, Arte Moreno’s love of the game is most important to him. I am very pleased that the Moreno family has decided to continue owning the team.”
Back on Aug. 22, Moreno announced that the team had retained financial advisers at Galatioto Sports Partners to aid in a potential sale. Although it was initially billed as exploratory in nature, the perception throughout the sport was that the Angels would indeed be sold. Moreno said as much as part of his statement, writing: “Now is the time.”
A little more than three months later, during MLB’s winter meetings from San Diego, Manfred made it seem as if the process was moving along, saying there were “multiple parties in the data room” — where interested buyers can take a closer look at a team’s financials — while adding that “the club would like to have the sale resolved before Opening Day.” Since then, prospective buyers were given tours of the ballpark, a source said. But it isn’t known whether any formal bids had been heard.
The 2023 season will serve as Moreno’s 21st as the Angels’ owner. It isn’t certain how much longer he will retain the franchise, or if any of his three children will ultimately change their minds and have interest in filling his shoes.
“During this process, it became clear that we have unfinished business and feel we can make a positive impact on the future of the team and the fan experience,” Moreno wrote in his statement. “This offseason we committed to a franchise record player payroll and still want to accomplish our goal of bringing a World Series Championship back to our fans. We are excited about this next chapter of Angels Baseball.”
Moreno, the first Hispanic owner of a major sports team in the U.S., attained instant credibility upon taking over. He lowered beer prices, signed Vladimir Guerrero and Bartolo Colon, and watched as the Angels, under Mike Scioscia, began a dominant run of five division titles over a six-year stretch from 2004 to 2009.
But the Angels have made the postseason only once ever since. In that stretch, Moreno has received increased criticism for failing to put a winning product around the transcendent talents of Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani. Moreno has caught flak for not investing enough in scouting and player development, not allocating enough financial resources to put the Angels on par with other analytically minded franchises and not exceeding the luxury tax threshold to make up for deficiencies in those areas.
In recent years, the Angels, under Moreno, have also become the face of more widespread issues regarding the treatment of minor league players and the reneging of bonuses in the international market. But the biggest black mark surrounded the overdose death of young pitcher Tyler Skaggs in 2019, which triggered a 22-year prison sentence for Eric Kay, a longtime member of the team’s public relations department. A wrongful death lawsuit around Skaggs’ death is still pending, among other litigation.
Moreno pushed the payroll to record numbers this offseason, allowing general manager Perry Minasian to spend on a number of veteran players — both via trade and free agency — who would help deepen the roster while in pursuit of a postseason berth. The Angels also decided against trading Ohtani going into his free agent year, maintaining at least an outside chance of extending him.
Angel Stadium, which opened in 1966, stands as the fourth-oldest ballpark in the majors and is in desperate need of a major renovation. Moreno has twice negotiated deals with the city of Anaheim to purchase the ballpark and its surrounding land that later fell apart, most recently because of an FBI probe into the former mayor of Anaheim.
But Angel Stadium’s proximity to major freeways and theme parks, and the prospect of building something around it, was considered enticing to prospective owners. So was the Angels’ substantive media rights deal, a 20-year, $3 billion contract with Fox that took effect in the 2012 season. Those factors, coupled with the rarity of owning a baseball franchise in Southern California, prompted some to speculate that the Angels might sell for as much as $3 billion.
That speculation is no longer necessary.
Rising Power Prices in Europe Are Making EV Ownership More Expensive
BERLIN—Rocketing electricity prices are increasing the cost of driving electric vehicles in Europe, in some cases making them more expensive to run than gas-powered models—a change that could threaten the continent’s electric transition.
Electricity prices have soared in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in some cases eliminating the cost advantage at the pump that EVs have enjoyed. In some cases, the cost difference between driving both types of cars 100 miles has become negligible. In others, EVs have become more expensive to fuel than equivalent gasoline-powered cars.
The price rises for power, which economists expect to last for years, remove a powerful incentive for consumers who were contemplating a switch to EVs, which used to be much cheaper to run than combustion engines.
Coming just as some governments are removing subsidies for EV buyers, this change could slow down EV sales, threaten the region’s greenhouse-gas emission targets, and make it hard for European car makers to recoup the high costs of their electric transition.
In Germany,
Tesla
has raised supercharger prices several times this year, most recently to 0.71 euros in September before falling somewhat, according to reports from Tesla owners on industry forums. There is no public source to track prices on Tesla superchargers.
At that price, drivers of Tesla’s Model 3, the most efficient all-electric vehicle in the Environment Protection Agency’s fuel guide in the midsize vehicle category, would pay €18.46 at a Tesla supercharger station in Europe for a charge sufficient to drive 100 miles.
By comparison, drivers in Germany would pay €18.31 for gasoline to drive the same distance in a Honda Civic 4-door, the equivalent combustion-engine model in the EPA’s ranking.
Tesla didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The change has been particularly notable in Germany, Europe’s largest car market, where household electricity cost €0.43 per kWh on average in December. This puts it well ahead of France, where consumers paid €0.21 per kWh in the first half of the year, but behind Denmark, where a kWh cost €0.46, according to the German statistics office.
The cost of electricity isn’t the only factor that can make an EV cheaper or more expensive to run than a gas-powered car. The price of the car, including potential subsidies, the cost of insurance and the price of maintenance all play a role in the cost equation over a car’s lifetime.
Maria Bengtsson, a partner at Ernst & Young responsible for the company’s EV business in the U.K., said studies of the total cost of owning an EV now show that with much higher electricity prices, it will take longer for EVs to become more affordable than conventional vehicles.
“When we looked at this before the energy crisis, we were looking at a tipping point of around 2023 to 2024. But if you assume you have a tariff going forward of $0.55, the tipping point then moves to 2026.”
If costs for operating EVs rise again, the tipping point would be pushed even further into the future, she said.
So far, there is no sign that the higher costs to charge electric cars has affected EV sales. Sales of all-electric cars totaled 259,449 vehicles in the three months to the end of September, up 11% from the previous quarter and 22% from the year earlier, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. In the third quarter, all-electric cars accounted for 11.9% of total new vehicle sales in the EU.
There is no relief in sight for EV users. In Germany, power prices have risen by a third from €0.33 per kWh in the first half of this year, according to Germany’s federal statistics office, and some power companies have announced prices will increase to more than €0.50 per kWh in January.
The German government’s independent panel of economic experts forecast that in the medium term these prices are likely to decline but won’t return to precrisis levels, meaning that higher costs for EV owners are here to stay.
Rheinenergie, a municipal utility in Cologne, said in November that it would raise its prices to €0.55 per kWh in January. In October, EnBW, a Stuttgart-based regional power company, raised its prices for a kWh of electricity to €0.37, up 37% from the previous month.
The most expensive way to charge an EV in Europe is on one of the fast-charging networks. Operators such as Tesla, Allego and Ionity have built roadside charging stations along major highways, where EV owners can drive up, plug in, and charge their batteries in as little as 15 minutes.
Fuel-economy estimates calculated by the EPA and current charging and gas prices in Europe show that some conventional vehicles are now cheaper to fuel with gasoline than equivalent electric models using fast-charging stations.
In the subcompact segment of the EPA’s 2023 Fuel Economy Guide, the Mini Cooper Hardtop was the most efficient model among EVs and gasoline-powered cars.
A 100-mile ride cost the Mini EV owner €26.35 at the Allego fast-charging network, which charges €0.85 per kWh. The conventional Mini cost €20.35 to pump enough fuel to accomplish the same journey.
Mini and its owner,
Bayerische Motoren Werke AG
, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the small two-door SUV category, the gasoline-powered Nissan Rogue handily beats the Hyundai Kona Electric, at a cost difference of €19.97 to €22.95. The Subaru Ascent standard SUV with four-wheel drive costs less to drive 100 miles than the Tesla Model X.
If an EV owner only charges their vehicle at home, they are generally still paying less for driving than conventional car users, although this gap has narrowed considerably.
Analysts say about 80% of EV charging takes place at home or at work, so if an electric vehicle is only used close to home it generally remains the least expensive option. But once the vehicle is used for longer road trips, drivers are more likely to use fast-charging stations because other options would take too long to charge the battery.
Charging a Tesla on 120V AC power—the power that comes from a standard U.S. wall socket—would take days. In Europe, 230V is the AC standard, according to Germany’s ZVEI electronics-industry association. European chargers installed on street corners, at supermarkets, places of work and in home garages can charge a powered down Tesla battery overnight.
The supercharger networks run on DC power, requiring at least 480 volts of power, and can charge up to around 200 miles of range within 15 minutes.
Write to William Boston at william.boston@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications
Standard household power is 120 volts in the U.S. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said 120 volts is the standard in Europe. (Corrected on Dec. 25)
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Musk begins his Twitter ownership with firings, declares the ‘bird is freed’
Oct 28 (Reuters) – Elon Musk has taken ownership of Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) with brutal efficiency, firing top executives but providing little clarity over how he will achieve the ambitions he has outlined for the influential social media platform.
“The bird is freed,” he tweeted after he completed his $44 billion acquisition on Thursday, referencing Twitter’s bird logo in an apparent nod to his desire to see the company have fewer limits on content that can be posted.
The CEO of electric car maker Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) and self-described free speech absolutist has, however, also said he wants to prevent the platform from becoming an echo chamber for hate and division.
Other goals include wanting to “defeat” spam bots on Twitter and make the algorithms that determine how content is presented to its users publicly available.
Yet Musk has not offered details on how he will achieve all this and who will run the company. He has said he plans to cut jobs, leaving Twitter’s 7,500 employees fretting about their future. He also said on Thursday he did not buy Twitter to make more money but “to try to help humanity, whom I love.”
In a running poll on messaging app Blind about whether Twitter employees will be employed in the company in three months, less that 10% voted “yes.” Of the 266 participants, 38% said “No” and over 55% chose the “popcorn” option. Blind allows anonymous messaging by employees to air their grievances where people can sign up with their corporate emails.
Musk fired Twitter Chief Executive Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde, according to people familiar with the matter. He had accused them of misleading him and Twitter investors over the number of fake accounts on the platform.
Agrawal and Segal were in Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters when the deal closed and were escorted out, the sources added.
Musk, who also runs rocket company SpaceX, plans to become Twitter’s CEO after completing the acquisition and also plans to scrap permanent bans on users, Bloomberg reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.
Twitter, Musk and the executives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
‘CHIEF TWIT’
Before closing the deal, Musk walked into Twitter’s headquarters on Wednesday with a big grin and a porcelain sink, subsequently tweeting “let that sink in.” He changed his Twitter profile description to “Chief Twit.”
He also tried to calm employee fears that major layoffs are coming and assured advertisers that his past criticism of Twitter’s content moderation rules would not harm its appeal.
“Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!” Musk said in an open letter to advertisers on Thursday.
As news of the deal spread, some Twitter users were quick to flag their willingness to walk away.
“I will be happy to leave in a heartbeat if Musk, well, acts as we all expect him to,” said a user with the @mustlovedogsxo account.
European regulators also reiterated past warnings that, under Musk’s leadership, Twitter must still abide by the region’s Digital Services Act, which levies hefty fines on companies if they do not control illegal content.
[1/2] Twitter logo and a photo of Elon Musk are displayed through magnifier in this illustration taken October 27, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
“In Europe, the bird will fly by our EU rules,” EU industry chief Thierry Breton twitted on Friday morning, posting in a self-reply a short video of Breton and Musk after their meeting last May.
In an indication of the challenges ahead, Bollywood actress Kangana Ranaut, who was banned from Twitter last year for violating its rules on hateful and abusive conduct, applauded Musk’s takeover on Instagram and shared requests from fans to have her account restored.
Musk also said in May he would reverse the ban on Donald Trump, who was removed after the attack on the U.S. Capitol. The former U.S. president has said he won’t return to the platform and has instead launched his own social media app, Truth Social.
A representative for Trump did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Musk has indicated he sees Twitter as a foundation for creating a “super app” that offers everything from money transfers to shopping and ride-hailing.
But Twitter is struggling to engage its most active users who are vital to the business. These “heavy tweeters” account for less than 10% of monthly overall users but generate 90% of all tweets and half of global revenue.
A SAGA
The deal’s road to fruition was full of twists and turns that sowed doubt over whether it would happen at all. It began on April 4, when Musk disclosed a 9.2% Twitter stake, becoming the company’s largest shareholder.
The world’s richest person then agreed to join Twitter’s board, only to balk at the last minute and offer to buy the company instead for $54.20 per share, an offer that Twitter thought might be another of Musk’s cannabis jokes.
Musk’s offer was real, and over the course of just one weekend later in April, the two sides reached a deal at the suggested price. This happened without Musk carrying out any due diligence on the company’s confidential information.
In the weeks that followed, Musk had second thoughts. He complained publicly about Twitter’s spam accounts and his lawyers then accused Twitter of not complying with his requests for information on the subject.
The acrimony resulted in Musk telling Twitter on July 8 he was terminating the deal. Four days later, Twitter sued Musk to force him to complete the acquisition.
By then, the stock market had plunged on concerns about a potential recession. Twitter accused Musk of buyer’s remorse, arguing he wanted out of the deal because he thought he overpaid.
Most legal analysts said Twitter had the strongest arguments and would likely prevail in court.
On Oct. 4, just as Musk was set to be deposed by Twitter’s lawyers, he performed another U-turn, offering to complete the deal as promised. He managed to do that, just one day ahead of a deadline given by a judge to avoid going to trial.
Twitter shares ended trade on Thursday up 0.3% at $53.86, just under the agreed price. The stock will be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange on Friday.
Reporting by Sheila Dang and Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Additional reporting by Tanvi Mehta in New Delhi and Miyoung Kim in Singapore; Editing by Nick Zieminski, Edwina Gibbs and Matt Scuffham
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Pitbull ownership calls for debate after baby, toddler mauled to death
The tragic mauling deaths of a baby and toddler has reignited the debate about whether pitbulls should be kept as pets.
Hollace Dean Bennard, five-months-old, and Lilly Jane Bennard, two-years-old, were attacked by their family’s two pitbulls in Shelby County, Tennessee last week.
Their mother, Kirstie Jane Bennard, 30, was seriously wounded and has an “uncountable amount of stitches and bite marks over her entire body, including her face” from trying to stop the vicious attack.
The two pitbulls, Cheech and Mia, were euthanised the next day.
The notion that pitbulls are too dangerous to have as pets has been long debated.
New data published in August revealed 628 children were admitted to Sydney Children’s Hospital with dog-related injuries from 2010 to 2020.
The average patient’s age was just five years old and the pitbull was the most common attacker making up 10.3 per cent of cases, followed by labradors (8.5 per cent) and rottweilers (6.8 per cent).
The average clinical cost per dog bite injury was $2968.
In the first three months of this year, there were 1027 reported dog bites and 69 canines euthanised in NSW alone.
news.com.au readers expressed their horror at the fatal dog attack in Tennessee, with some stating it’s impossible to ignore the statistics when it comes to deciding whether the breed is inherently dangerous or not.
Others said that no matter the breed, children and dogs do not mix.
“Anyone who chooses to have them, especially around children, are fools in my opinion. This is such a sad story, and the worst way imaginable to learn that pitbulls are not a good idea,” wrote one reader on Facebook, gaining hundreds of likes in support.
Another person described the breed as “killers”.
“No dog is completely trustworthy around children no matter what the breed. As much as I love my two sweet French Bulldogs, I still don’t trust them or leave them alone around my grandchildren, you just never know,” wrote someone else.
“No dog is trustworthy simple as that! I have dogs and will never fully trust them, natural instincts can kick in at anything for whatever reason,” said another.
Some readers were quick to defend the breed.
“Always blaming the breed but never the owner. What about all of the heroic ones that have saved their owners and human siblings? What about all the ones that have been raised with love and not violence?” wrote one person.
“Please don’t start breed of dog hating! Something is seriously wrong here!” said another.
The Tennesse family’s pitbulls were reportedly never aggressive before the attack.
“I can promise you those children were her world, and if there was any inkling of danger, she would have never had those dogs near her kids,” the devastated mother’s friend Kelsey Canfield told Fox News.
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals are against banning of particular dog breeds as “all dogs, including pitbulls, are individuals” and should be treated as such.
Its position is that responsible ownership is the most appropriate action for stamping out dangerous dogs across various breeds.
ASPCA does say despite best efforts there will always be dangerous dogs that need to be properly cared for and controlled to reduce risk.
Former US president Barack Obama made a statement in 2013 opposing legislation that would restrict ownership of dogs by breed, with pitbulls the most common target.
“We don’t support breed-specific legislation – research shows that bans on certain types of dogs are largely ineffective and often a waste of public resources,” he said.
Back in Australia, the RSCPA does not support breed-specific legislation as it too “considers that any dog of any size, breed or mix of breeds may be dangerous and thus dogs should not be declared dangerous on the basis of breed or appearance.”
This stance is supported by the Australian Veterinary Association.
Restricted dog breeds in Australia include the American pitbull terrier or pitbull terrier, dogo Argentino, fila Brasileiro, Japanese tosa and Perro de Presa Canario or Presa Canario.
In Victoria, owners can face up to 10 years jail if their restricted dog kills someone or up to five years if their dog endangers someone’s life.
LeBron James, Draymond Green, Kevin Love join Major League Pickleball ownership group
LeBron James is taking his talents to the pickleball court — sort of.
The Los Angeles Lakers star leads a group of NBA players and businessmen investing in Major League Pickleball, along with Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green and Cleveland Cavaliers forward Kevin Love. Maverick Carter, James’ longtime friend and CEO of their entertainment brand SpringHill Company, SpringHill CMO Paul Rivera and investment firm SC Holdings and Relevent Sports Group co-owner and CEO Daniel Sillman are also among the ownership group, MLP announced Wednesday.
“Having SC Holdings, LRMR Ventures, and their incredible group as owners and investors in Major League Pickleball is not just great for MLP, it’s a watershed moment for pickleball in general,” MLP founder Steve Kuhn said in a statement.