Barbie’s global conquest, Musk’s X-rated rebrand, the Premier League in the US, the Ashes paywall and The 1975’s miscalculation are just some of the stories that feature in this week’s Takeaways, picking up on communications trends across sport, entertainment and experience.
Fast Company and The New York Times on our Barbie world
There are a lot of things a Barbie movie could have been. Right now, it is on course to become the most successful cinematic release of 2023, having recorded the biggest opening weekend of the year so far in the US and grossed over $400 million at the worldwide box office.
Before toymaker Mattel rolls out its extraordinary line-up of IP-backed titles — from Lena Dunham’s Polly Pocket to a ‘surrealistic’ Barney the Dinosaur film starring Daniel Kaluuya to JJ Abrams’ ‘grounded and gritty’ take on, um, Hot Wheels — its marketing department will reflect for now on a job comprehensively done.
Meanwhile, director Greta Gerwig has explained to the New York Times just how she smuggled her distinctive feminist satire into a bright pink celebration of playtime.
The Drum on X missing the spot
Perhaps fed up of negative headlines about Twitter, owner Elon Musk rolled out an overnight rebrand at the weekend.
The launch of X is intended as the first step on the road to a world-conquering ‘super-app’, comparable to platforms like China’s WeChat, that integrates services such as shopping and banking. But as Musk tries to rearrange the whole game with his rugged sound, there are plenty who don’t want to hear it — and they don’t even want to look at the company’s new logo.
The Verge on a return to a people-led internet
For some, the decline of Twitter — sorry, X — is just one sign of a watershed in the evolution of the internet. So does the next era actually look more like the world before web 2.0, the social media giants and the algorithm?
The Premier League heads to the Big Apple
Between independent tours and the competition’s own Summer Series, almost half of the clubs in English football’s Premier League are currently in the US.
With tech companies entering the media rights picture and the 2026 Fifa World Cup approaching, it is a market that is only growing in importance. And the league has underlined its commitment by opening a first North American office in New York.
The Ringer on the legacy of The Last Dance
Golden State Warriors icon Steph Curry became the latest high-profile subject of a sports documentary this month, with the well-received Underrated charting his rise from overlooked prospect to game-changing NBA champion. Still, the influence on the genre of a certain lockdown-era Netflix basketball series remains palpable.
CNN on Tom Brady’s wave-making new entry
One athlete whose career story has already been written is NFL great Tom Brady, who finally began his life beyond the gridiron at the end of last season.
The 45-year-old enters a bumper broadcast deal with Fox as an on-air analyst from 2024 and in the meantime, he is working on his entrepreneurial portfolio. His latest venture: following Rafael Nadal and Didier Drogba as the owner of a team in the UIM E1 World Championship, in a major boost to the startup electric powerboat series.
SportsPro on UK media lessons from the Ashes
The Manchester rain may have washed away England’s men’s hopes of regaining the Ashes from Australia — just a week after England’s women fell just short of their own improbable comeback — but the last few weeks have delivered some unforgettable Test cricket.
The problem in the UK, as it has been since Channel 4 carried England’s historic series win back in 2005, concerns who gets to share in those memories when all live TV coverage is behind a paywall. In her column for SportsPro, Ampere Analysis’ Minal Modha outlines why some form of free-to-air access is still critical to hopes of growing national sporting occasions.
The BBC on The 1975’s misjudged protest
Last week, at the Good Vibes music festival in Kuala Lumpur, The 1975 frontman Matty Healy made some forceful remarks about the country’s strict anti-LGBTQ+ laws before kissing bassist Ross McDonald.
The gesture may have been meant as a strident display of rock ’n’ roll solidarity but, with the band heading home and the festival cancelled, local LGBTQ+ groups have warned that they must now deal with the consequences of Healy’s ‘performative activism’.
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