PanthersATL

Mills Field at (insert sponsor here) Stadium

Can’t wait to see it in action. Exciting times to be a Panthers fan. have lots of Alabama friends looking to join the Panthers bandwagon a smidge and cheer on Bryce with us… im glad that the NFL rules recently have gotten better about protecting the QB regarding bad hits and stuff. I hope that Bryce gets the credit and takes advantage of those rules in all the ways that we never got to see when Cam was targeted unfairly and the refs looked the other way

Most likely to be a Carolina-based business, if I had to guess. Mercedes shifted their naming rights to Atlanta from NO when they put their N.A. HQ down the street. I could see BMW picking this up because of their SC presence along with some competition. Could also see Hyundai looking at a large marketing opportunity (Kia and Hyundai do a lot of sports marketing, and sponsorship rights don’t come up often) Pepsi would be interesting, but am unsure if that would conflict with any NFL contractual obligations with Coca-Cola. Big picture is I’d doubt it would be a consumer retail/store product company. That would be “no” to Bojangles too. Lowes would be interesting too, but they might be more interested in sponsoring a side project, like the Home Depot Backyard area at MB Stadium. Insurance company, maybe. Geico? Truist might make a play for it too. Keep it in the Banking area. Doubtful Amazon, Apple, Meta, or Google would spend money here as they’re not really looking to build awareness. oooh, why not go back old school to memories of Ericsson? T-Mobile likes arenas, why not do a stadium? Have to figure out how the magenta would work with Panther Blue though.

Could see why Corral would be a little miffed at this: “So we thought the rookie way was the right way to go, to draft and develop, and fix the problem rather than taking swings here and there. … Eventually, you just have to draft and develop your own guy.”

Wouldn't hate it. Chicago and Nashville in September are delightful.

Pretty sure that 4 of the last 6 games will be against NFC South. Maybe even 5 of the last 6. I'm okay with this. I think the Seattle game will be after our Bye, and we'll play the Texans Thurs night before the Bye for an easy National slot . I can see the Indy/Bears games at the beginning of the season due to the coach and DJ Moore storylines. 1 - Indianapolis (Home) 2 - Bears (Away) 3 - Packers (Home) 4 - Nashville (Away) 5 - Jaguars (Away) 6 - Falcons (Home) 7 - Saints (Away) 8 - Vikings (Home) 9 - Houston (Home) Thur Night Game 10 - BYE 11- Seattle (Away) 12 - Detroit (Away) 13 - Cowboys (Home) 14 - Tampa (Home) 15- Dolphins (Away) 16 - Atlanta (Away) 17 - New Orleans (Home) 18 - Tampa (Away)

Previous seasons, didn’t they announce the Europe matches (not the sedates) early?

They were already talking about trading up to #2. Tepper is the one who said, "it's not that big a differential to go to #1 - so do that." In the end, it was still Fitt and company that made that decision - but they had Tepp's support to make it happen rather than playing more conservatively.

Have listened to the ESPN radio draft coverage, and it's pretty good. Minimal commercial interruptions as they fill a lot of time actually discussing the picks as they're made.

Regardless of how you choose to watch, I'd recommend not watching via a streaming method IF you're also following along on the Huddle or Twitter or have friends texting you. Chances are you'll be 30-60 seconds behind everybody else, and where's the fun of that?

The draft will be on ABC, ESPN, and NFL Network.

Live video from the draft:

New for the 2023 season, here's the ranking for markets based on "number of homes" for TV purposes. The top are the usual suspects of NY, LA, Chicago. It's the 2nd half of the list that gets more interesting. This is strictly the home city, not necessarily the entire suburbia market coverage. If you take into account the full Panthers viewing area which covers multiple Nielsen survey areas, we rank a bit higher up the list than this. In other words, we're definitely not "small market" - don't let what others say fool you on this.

More because Chapek wasn't very good at his job. Share price was down pretty hard, lower than expected profits, and the direct-to-consumer division lost $1.5b in one three month period. He wanted to move away from animated movies, kinda screwed up Disney+ a bit... And yes, Chapek raised WDW prices pretty hard during his tenure, blaming "increased demand" for the reasoning, but without supplementing that with in-park improvements. But the ticket prices by themselves is not what resulted in Iger replacing Chapek.

A good agent --- especially after showing a potential buyer a certain number of homes -- will eventually know exactly what home/features will be worthwhile and which ones won't be. We had one agent bring us to a house with "we know you're going to hate (a) (b) (c), but thought we'd show it to you anyway". We hated (a) (b) (c) for exactly the reasons the realtor expected. They were efficient in narrowing down available options for us to look at, saved a LOT of time

Disagree. Fun fact: Disney+ is based on the streaming platform MLB built. Sports still needs distribution for viewers, and streaming platforms don't have the $$ by themselves to pay the bucks that the leagues are looking for. Read the ESPN oral history book for the details on the NCAA negotiations that had to happen for ESPN to even launch the channel. The leagues want maximum eyeballs. Going 100% YT content creators/streaming platforms will not give them what they want. Jomboy's relationship with MLB is interesting in that he negotiated that the MLB can have 100% of the associated YT revenue in exchange for using their clips -- Jomboy makes their money on the in-video sponsorships. If MLB balked at that arrangement, Jomboy would be nowhere. (game show network forced Jomboy to pull some of his game show reviews due to copyright, for example)

All corporations are in the business to make money, some do it better than others. But Disney is not even close to being at the top. I don't fault any company for making money --- if they provide me my expected value for their prices, I'm happy to pay. If I don't find value or worthwhile use, I'll pass it by - but won't dissuade others from being willing to pay up. Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Tesla, Berkshire Hathaway, NVidia, Facebook are all in the Top Ten (among a few lesser well-known names).

Good luck on getting access to the SW rides. They're fantastic, but your patience may be tested.

I'd recommend subscribing to the TOURING PLANS app (it's low cost vs the paid-for Genie) to help organize your day-off activities. Have used it, and it's pretty accurate vs the freebie wait times seen in the official Disney app. Plus, it's pretty solid in terms of making a complete day plan of which attractions to hit in order when you give it a full list of what you want to do.

Genie is a sad replacement for the superior Fast Pass.... but they needed to go to a digital/online/app-based solution if they were going to keep the Fast Pass concept. Regardless, the concept of Fast Pass is horrible as it forces people out of waiting on line for attractions and into the streets making things more crowded than they should be. The nice thing about the Fast Pass lines is that it allows a (reasonable) way for guests who require an expediated line experience a way to access the ride without entering through the exit. (ie: guest passes due to earlier ride malfunctions, Make-a-Wish kids) The ABCDE ticket books were fantastic, as it forced guests to experience all the attractions to get the full ticket book value rather than focus only on the E-level tickets.

They did two seasons of a terrific Road Rules-style show called BEG BORROW AND DEAL, where the contestants had to go across the country) with zero cash, credit cards, or cell phones while they score points by competing various tasks THE CHALLENGE is fantastic. 39 seasons (plus spin-offs) of must-see TV http://www.espn.com/begborrowdeal/

Happy to discuss :: opened a thread in nerdvana to avoid mucking up an ESPN convo.

Over in another thread, @Ricky Prickles said I get what you’re saying, but I find the argument flawed. the problem is that the parks are way way too crowded (blame Fastpass, and more so the new Genii/lightning lane), along with many years of poor attraction planning/management . but people keep flocking to the parks, so there are only so many ways to find that balancing point. When Disney abandoned the ABCDE ticket books for POP, that was the beginning of the issue-but bearable as there were only a single queue line for each attraction. Once a bean counter determined that there was a way to put more people in shops without losing ride capacity- that was a weakening of the system. Lack of investment in infrastructure was a sledgehammer, yes, the cost of a single day ticket has risen dramatically, percentage-wise. But the vast majority of Disney visitors do not buy single day tickets. So using the price of a single day ticket is not really fair for their economic model. Hotel prices are based on demand + features. More demand means higher prices. Lower quality will be lower prices (naturally. Case in point, as the All Star Resorts keep high occupancy, then rates can rise until occupancy evens out or drops a smidge. WDW is designed to require multiple days to explore the bulk of the 47 square miles of land that make up the resort. It’s designed for multiple day vacations. Disneyland has the opposite issue: it’s now designed for annual pass, day-trippers who visit daily for a few hours at a time. The quality of the parks / guest experience is declining. WDW can’t afford to upgrade space mountain or haunted mansion because they don’t want to take those attractions offline for two-six months as they don’t want to ruin a guests planned vacation. But by not doing so, they minimize the overall experience for everyone. land yet, crowds keep coming, no matter the price point. And part of that are parents feeling obligated to take their kids at least once (or more!!!!). There needs to be a price point where the average family says “no”, or at least, “just once” to alleviate the crowding and make the higher price feel like it’s a better experience. Forcing people to make park, ride, and meal reservations 6 mo this in advance isnt fun at all. because it’s not going to happen merely by limiting reservations to X thousand visitors a day. Heck, the park hoppers got angree when they couldn’t park hop until,after 1p or 2p. Imagine how angry people would get if reservations were more locked down. (disclosure: havent been to WDW in close to 16 years after visiting at least once a year for a bit, including touring the parks as the guest of former staff members who’ve written multiple books about Disney history)

You chose wisely. This years women's NCAA tournament -especially the later rounds - was fantastic

The ESPN oral.history book is fantastic, if you have a chance to read it. Explains a lot of what it takes (took) to launch a network and negotiate sports contracts, etc