TheChek News Flow

League aims for jump in fees by luring streamers, from Amazon to Apple, and offering games in local markets

The stars of the National Basketball Association are taking to the court as a new season begins next week. Behind the scenes, the league has started talks to secure the billions of dollars in media-rights fees that will help pay their huge salaries.

As the NBA enters its first media negotiations in a decade, its biggest partners, Disney’s DIS -0.23%decrease; red down pointing triangle ESPN and Warner Bros. Discovery’s WBD -1.83%decrease; red down pointing triangle TNT—which together pay about $2.6 billion a year— aren’t looking to pony up big spending increases.

Each company is under investor pressure to trim costs, with cable TV’s decline and hefty mergers weighing on their balance sheets. Meanwhile, the largest sports broadcaster in local markets is in bankruptcy and on the brink of liquidation.

The solution: The league is looking to bring additional parties to the negotiating table as it plots out its new deals, which would go into effect after the 2024-2025 season. For consumers, those deals could change significantly where games are broadcast.

ESPN and TNT, which carry roughly 165 nationally televised games combined, are exploring signing up for smaller packages, said people familiar with the situation. That arrangement would help them hang onto a premier asset in American media without breaking the bank. Those companies already are in renewal talks with the NBA, with an exclusive negotiation period set to expire in April.

If ESPN and TNT buy fewer games, that would allow the league to create a package for a streaming video player. Amazon AMZN -1.21%decrease; red down pointing triangle and Apple AAPL -0.24%decrease; red down pointing triangle already have expressed interest—and are looking for much more than a small slice of NBA games.

“They’re benefitting from the fact that there are new entrants who look to want to play,” said Jonathan Miller, former NBA executive and chief executive of Integrated Media, which specializes in digital media investments.

Amazon and others have indicated they would find it even more appealing if the NBA could package national TV rights with local-market rights—so they can show people in Indiana the games of the hometown Pacers, for example, and the same in other cities around the country, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The league is looking at doing just that, some of the people said, and the bankruptcy of Diamond Sports —parent of the Bally Sports branded regional channels that once operated under the Fox Sports Net brand—is expected to accelerate those efforts.

In the American sports landscape, the National Football League towers above all else. But the NBA is number two, given its appeal with younger audiences, and is in a strong position to demand a tripling of fees, as it did last time around, said David Levy, who negotiated TNT’s last deal with the NBA in 2014.

“Pop culture, fashion, relevancy—why wouldn’t the number 2 get a 3x increase?” Levy said.

The NBA hasn’t said publicly what fee increase it is seeking. Tripling the last agreement would mean a deal worth about $78 billion over a decade. Media rights make up a big chunk of league revenues, along with ticket and merchandise sales.

“You have to recognize that the marketplace has gone through some change in the last few years and so that does temper what is possible,” said Ed Desser, president of sports-media consulting firm Desser Sports Media and a former NBA media executive. “But on the other hand, the NBA hasn’t had a reset in almost a decade.”

CNBC and Bloomberg earlier reported on elements of the NBA’s media-rights negotiations and interest from potential bidders, including streamers.

In the most recent season, NBA games on TNT, ESPN and ABC averaged 1.6 million viewers. The playoffs attracted more than five million viewers, according to Nielsen data, and were nearly always the most popular programming across all of television for audiences under 50.

The total viewership is far smaller than the NFL’s, which averaged about 17 million viewers per game last season. But the NBA will be the last major sports-media property to come up for bidding for a long time, said Lee Berke, president and chief executive of LHB Sports, Entertainment and Media, a sports media consulting firm. “This is the last train to jump on,” he said.

TV networks have a strong incentive to carry sports because it is among the only content people tune into in large numbers on cable nowadays. In addition to ESPN and TNT, NBC’s sports unit is also interested in NBA rights, a person familiar with the situation said. But networks are getting choosy. ESPN chose to pass on renewing rights to the Big Ten college football conference, for example, and took a smaller MLB package in the most recent negotiations.

Streamers, meanwhile, see sports as a subscriber magnet. YouTube and Amazon each have major NFL packages, while Apple has a deal with Major League Soccer.

In the local arena, Diamond is fighting for survival and may lose the rights to broadcast games in markets where it owns a team’s rights. As of last week, it owed payments to the NBA and National Hockey League for their new seasons, and was in talks with Comcast CMCSA 0.06%increase; green up pointing triangle to ensure continued carriage of its TV channels.

If Diamond is forced into Chapter 7 liquidation, the NBA would take back the media rights in 15 markets. In the short term, the league would have to broadcast and distribute those games itself, with the NBA app serving as a platform for teams’ own streaming services.

Under the league’s strategy, individual teams would stream games and, potentially, put them on over-the-air broadcast channels, as the Phoenix Suns and Utah Jazz have already done, a person familiar with the league’s planning said.

The NBA has offered Diamond and its creditors a variety of options to keep its channels broadcasting games, including extensions lasting one year or several years, with slightly discounted fees, according to a person familiar with the situation.

No matter what, the league intends to have control of Diamond’s local-market rights in time to offer them along with its national rights packages. Diamond doesn’t control rights to several big markets, such as Boston and Philadelphia.

The league could find other blocks of games to sell. The NBA this year is launching an in-season tournament, with a winner to be awarded on Dec. 9 in Las Vegas. ESPN will be the broadcaster this year, but the league could separate out the tournament as another package in future seasons.

As ESPN separately hunts for a strategic partner to help with its transition to streaming, the NBA has discussed offering its League Pass package—a subscription service that lets fans watch games outside their home markets—to ESPN in exchange for a small equity stake, The Wall Street Journal reported. The NBA is unlikely to move forward with such a conversation until discussions with ESPN on a larger media-rights deal are completed.

As the Paris art market prepares for its busiest season with the opening today of the second edition of Paris+ par Art Basel, the local scene is basking in the warm autumn glow of the international art world’s good favor. This, despite the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Gaza, France’s raising its security alert to the highest level following the stabbing of a teacher in the northern part of the country this past Friday, and the Louvre and Versailles being evacuated Saturday out of precaution following bomb and security risks, respectively.

Still, art world revelers were not deterred from convening at openings over the weekend, including those at two blue-chip galleries’ new French outposts: Mendes Wood DM in the Place des Vosges and Hauser & Wirth’s 19th-century hotel particulier near the Champs Elysées. That these inaugurations—and other gallery opening receptions—took place over the weekend this year, as opposed to during the week as they did last year, is worth noting.

Dealer Nathalie Obadia, whose eponymous gallery recently expanded its Paris footprint, said, as has long been speculated and buoyed by Brexit, Paris may indeed be draining some of Frieze London’s mojo: visitors “are either ignoring Frieze, or only going for one day, and then coming to Paris right away. It shows Frieze is no longer prioritized,” she said.

While Obadia’s view may be hard to prove, Paris has become a hot destination for collectors, advisers, and others coming from outside Europe, who are attracted to the City of Light’s fast-growing roster of international art galleries, private art foundations, and experimental alternative spaces in walkable distance from its world-class museums, not to mention its luxurious hotels, coveted fashion and design, and gourmet restaurants. The Parisian contemporary art scene is blooming—and the sophomore edition of Paris+ is certainly potent fertilizer. This week will also see several satellite fairs—Paris Internationale, Asia Now, AKAA Art & Design Fair, and the inaugural Design Miami/Paris—crop up across the city.

“With Paris+ everything is more international!” Guillaume Piens, who runs the regional fair Art Paris each spring, told ARTnews in an email. With more and more galleries coming, “this is a major, historic turning point for Paris,” Piens said.

Nevertheless, the second edition of an art fair can be tricky; once the hype of the first act subsides, will the fair be able to stand on its own and have long-term impact on the city’s art scene?

“Last year there was the question of whether the first edition signaled that Paris is back,” said Paris+ director Clément Delépine, referring to the city’s former status as the world’s leading art center. “We’ll need to compare [results] over time to identify a trajectory,” he said from a fair office room on the Champs Elysées. But “if the galleries are bringing the masterpieces they plan to show, it means they’re confident in finding a Paris audience, and in selling them … This is clearly a Parisian moment that, for now, hasn’t run out of steam.”

Obadia said that several clients have confirmed they will be in Paris this week for the fair, which could itself pose a problem on the two VIP days, beginning Wednesday, given that Paris+’s temporary home, the Grand Palais Ephémère, is smaller than the iconic Grand Palais, to which it will return, post-Olympics renovations in 2024.

Despite the uptick in attention on Paris each October, locals wonder whether this recent allure will translate into real growth to the French art market, now the fourth largest globally and accounting for about half of all art transactions in the European Union. The numbers from the auction houses suggest there is still much progress to be made: French fine art auction sales still lag behind its UK neighbors. Despite consistent growth, French houses accounted for only 6 percent of the global secondary market in the first half of 2023, whereas those in the UK accounted for about 17 period in the same period, amid an average global drop in sales of 20 percent, according to Artprice. Auction sales in Paris remain “much more conservative” than those in competing cities like London, New York, or Hong Kong, according to Artprice’s head economist Jean Minguet, as the major houses generally do not auction coveted lots by blue-chip artists and rising stars in Paris.

“Galleries are coming in, and it’s great, but is the pie big enough to share?” asked dealer Magda Danysz, who has spaces in Paris, Shanghai, and London. “What financial results can we show for it, and does it benefit the French scene?”

Obadia, however, remained optimistic, saying that “the reason so many foreign galleries are coming to France, is also to go after French collectors … I’ve seen a new generation of French art enthusiasts who are really building ambitious contemporary art collections—and that’s completely new.”

But Paris+ did not arrive in the French capital without an air of controversy. Art Basel booted the longtime hometown fair, FIAC, from its Grand Palais slot. And with it, some French galleries long on the exhibitor list did not make the cut last year. Danysz’s gallery is one of them, having been waitlisted for Paris+ last year. As an alternative, she exhibited at the Asia Now fair at La Monnaie de Paris. This year, she decided against all fairs to focus on the program at the gallery and promoting French painter Rakajoo, who has an exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo opening this week.

Still, like other galleries interviewed that were not selected for Paris+, Danysz was unequivocal about the clear impact of Paris+ in drawing international clients; in fact, she said her business has seen a rise in sales this year. That includes foreigners “we wouldn’t have met without this effervescence” of Paris +, she said.

Despite whispers to the contrary last year, both FIAC and Paris+ included similar percentages of French-originating galleries, between about 25 percent and 30 percent, on their exhibitor lists. Though Paris+ officially says it has closer to 40 percent French galleries, as it counts any gallery with an outpost in France, including the blue-chips that have only been operational on French soil for less than four years, like David Zwirner (opened in 2019), Hauser & Wirth, and Mendes Wood DM.

By week’s end, there will already be talk about the third edition and whether this spotlight on Paris is more than just a trend. “It’s likely to last because it’s about a whole ecosystem, which is considerably strengthened by Paris+,” Alain Quemin, an art sociologist and professor at University of Paris 8, told ARTnews.

Delépine, the Paris+ director, used a French saying—Il y a du biscuit (there’s a lot to chew on)—to sum up the range of impressive art exhibitions on view leading into the week.

Striking a more serious note concerning the ongoing crisis in Gaza, Delépine said, “It’s undeniable that our fair is taking place within the context of a humanitarian catastrophe. In moments like these, we hope that our fair can also be a space where we can unite, a vector of mutual support, comprehension, solidarity, humanity, and collective consciousness.”

Comment le fisc utilise l’intelligence artificielle pour contrôler les contribuables

Réseaux sociaux, images satellites et plates-formes de vente en ligne sont désormais scannés par des IA afin de déceler des fraudes.

Depuis plusieurs années déjà, les outils utilisés pour le contrôle fiscal reposent sur un recours accru à l’exploitation des données de masse, ou data mining, par le biais de l’intelligence artificielle. La direction générale des finances publiques (DGFiP) peut ainsi repérer des profils de fraude en analysant et en recoupant, par le biais d’algorithmes, toutes les informations dont elle dispose, et établir des listes de contribuables à contrôler.

A l’origine, ces recoupements ne pouvaient porter que sur des données issues de fichiers de l’administration fiscale et d’autres administrations françaises ou étrangères, ou de bases de données privées.

En 2021, une étape supplémentaire a été franchie avec la technique du « web scraping ». Mise en place à titre expérimental pour une période de trois ans, cette technique permet à l’administration fiscale de collecter et d’exploiter – par le biais de traitements informatisés et automatisés – des données personnelles publiées sur les réseaux sociaux (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn…) et sur les sites de vente en ligne comme Leboncoin, Vinted, eBay, etc.

Enquête sur Internet

Seule condition pour pouvoir les « avaler » : ces données doivent être accessibles par tout le monde, sans qu’il soit nécessaire d’être inscrit sur le site ou de saisir un mot de passe pour y accéder. En outre, la collecte et le traitement de ces données ne peuvent être réalisés que pour poursuivre l’un des trois objectifs suivants : détecter les « fausses » domiciliations fiscales à l’étranger, repérer les activités professionnelles non déclarées et les activités occultes de contrebande et de contrefaçon.

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Jugeant les « résultats prometteurs » – le bilan de cette expérimentation n’a, pour l’instant, donné lieu à aucun compte rendu, d’après le syndicat Solidaires finances publiques –, le projet de loi de finances pour 2024 prévoit de le proroger pour deux années supplémentaires. Ce faisant, il élargit son champ d’application, tant en matière de données collectées que de manquements recherchés, et autorise « les agents des impôts à procéder à des enquêtes sous pseudonyme sur des sites Internet, les réseaux sociaux et les applications de messagerie ».

Combiner IA et vues aériennes

Un autre projet phare qui a largement mobilisé l’intelligence artificielle, et sur lequel Bercy a beaucoup communiqué, est le dispositif appelé « Foncier innovant ». Il repose sur l’exploitation des images aériennes de l’Institut national de l’information géographique et forestière. Les algorithmes mis en œuvre par les services de la DGFiP ont permis d’en extraire les contours d’immeubles bâtis, notamment des piscines.

Un second traitement informatique a ensuite rendu possible l’identification des piscines qui avaient été détectées par les images aériennes, pour vérifier si elles avaient été correctement déclarées aux services de l’administration et intégrées à la valeur locative cadastrale, qui sert de base de calcul à la taxe foncière, mais aussi à la taxe d’habitation sur les résidences secondaires. Dans le cas contraire, un courrier de relance a été systématiquement adressé aux propriétaires concernés.

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Initialement expérimenté en 2021 dans neuf départements, ce dispositif a été progressivement généralisé sur l’ensemble des départements métropolitains. Il a permis de taxer 20 000 piscines supplémentaires au titre de la taxe foncière pour l’année 2022, ce qui représente près de 10 millions d’euros de recettes supplémentaires pour les communes concernées, selon la DGFiP. En 2023, des courriels ou courriers ont été adressés à plus de 120 000 propriétaires pour les inviter à régulariser leur situation.

'Browse with Bing' exits beta and passes DALL-E 3 on the way out

OpenAI has formally launched its internet-browsing feature to ChatGPT, some three weeks after re-introducing the feature in beta after several months in hiatus.

ChatGPT, the generative AI chatbot that has taken the world by storm these past 12 months, has historically been limited to data up to September, 2021 — rendering it useless as a real-time search engine. However, OpenAI started bringing internet services to ChatGPT back in March, a move that always came with inherent risks, given that the live web isn’t curated in the same way a static training data set is — this potentially opened the doors to abuse by bad actors and good old-fashioned algorithmic chaos.

Then in May, OpenAI started rolling out web search via Bing, the search engine belonging to OpenAI’s corporate backer Microsoft, before extending access to the ChatGPT mobile app in late June. However, the new feature was swiftly pulled after it was discovered that ChatGPT was capable of displaying paywalled content.

Fast-forward to late September, and OpenAI started rolling the Browse with Bing feature out again, having fine-tuned how ChatGPT follows instructions laid out by content owners — essentially, it now promised to adhere to whatever a site-owner said in its Robots.txt file, similar to traditional web crawlers.

Now, Browse with Bing is officially available to all Plus and Enterprise subscribers, with no need to toggle their beta switch in settings.

In related news, OpenAI also transitioned DALL-E 3 into beta, a month after debuting the latest incarnation of the text-to-image generator.

DALL-E 3 sports integration with ChatGPT, meaning that users don’t have to think so carefully about their text-prompts when asking DALL-E to create an image — ChatGPT can do a lot of the heavylifting to ensure that the image the user gets, is closer to what they wanted.

But more than that, with DALL-E 3 embedded directly into ChatGPT, users will now be able to receive images as part of their text-based queries without having to switch between the two apps.

DALL-E 3 is available in beta now on the web and mobile, with users able to activate the feature by selecting “DALL-E 3 (Beta)” from the GPT-4 tab inside ChatGPT.

This all constitutes part of a broader expansion that is leading ChatGPT farther from a pure text-based generator, and down a path where audio and imagery are very much part of its remit.

Last month, OpenAI gave ChatGPT a mouth and ears with users able to have a verbal conversation with the chatbot, bringing together the worlds of Alexa-style voice assistants with powerful large language models (LLMs). For example, a user will be able to ask ChatGPT to invent and then narrate a bedtime story for their kid on the spot, though it’s maybe worth being on hand to see what it comes up with.

Additionally, ChatGPT will also allow users to search for answers using images, meaning that someone can upload a picture of an object and discover what it is or find similar items.

So today’s news very much fits into OpenAI broader push to make ChatGPT a fully integrated, real-time, multimedia generative search engine.

General Motors is pushing its $4 billion plan to convert its Orion Assembly plant into an EV truck factory to late 2025, a year later than scheduled.

GM’s reasoning behind the delay — which will mean Orion will sit idle for two years — is “to better manage capital investment while aligning with evolving EV demand,” the company said in a statement sent to TechCrunch. The company also said it’s identified engineering improvements that will be implemented to increase profitability of its products.

In other words, EV demand has changed and maybe isn’t as strong as expected. That softening demand, which we’ve seen at other companies such as Lucid’s deliveries numbers reported Tuesday, is forcing automakers to adjust timelines and plans to pour billions into new factories or conversions of existing ones.

GM’s Orion Assembly Plant, with some 1,271 employees, is currently where the Chevy Bolt and Chevy Bolt EUV are assembled. GM plans to end production of those two vehicles at the end of the year. Union employees at Orion will be offered other jobs in Michigan, including positions at Factory ZERO Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly, where the GMC Hummer EV pickup and SUV, Chevrolet Silverado EV and Cruise Origin are being produced. Factory ZERO workers will also start making the GMC Sierra EV next year. GM said production at this facility has been increasing with plans to add a second shift in 2024.

GM announced in January 2022 it would invest $4 billion to convert the Orion factory to produce electric trucks using the GM-developed Ultium Platform. The project, as originally outlined, would include expanding the existing facility, adding new body and paint shops as well as new general assembly and battery pack assembly areas.

That conversion is part of a larger $7 billion investment in four Michigan factories focused on battery cell and electric truck manufacturing, including a third plant with partner LG Energy Solutions.

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