Horizons Newsletter – week 20 // 2021
Horizons is a bi-monthly Dasym Research initiative to show you how the Dasym themes have been in the news. We publish the Horizons on our website and as an email newsletter. If you wish to receive the email, please contact Investor Relations.
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A European Super League is inevitable
The European Super League, announced in April, was supposed to result in multiple blockbuster matches every week. Yet, the plan was met with lots of anger by European football (soccer) fans and officials. Within two days, most of the founding clubs withdrew their support. European fans felt that more than a century of football history and culture was about to be swept aside in favor of mere commercial interests. However, as part of the ongoing hegemonic shift of global (economic) power from the West to the East, non-European viewers will come to dominate global football viewership. Hence, their preferences are bound to determine the future of European club football. While European viewers may still be interested in their local team and national leagues, international(e.g. Asian and American) viewers seem to be only interested in games between the leading clubs and the very best players. As such, it is hard to imagine how European football will be able to withstand these tectonic forces in the future.
Broaden your horizon?
In this section we share content that may be of interest to you:
- It is important to understand when gamification will work—and when it will only make matters worse. What matters most is how the people playing the game feel about it. Recent science suggests it makes lots of sense for apps to continue gamifying our achievements, so long as they’re promoting goals we’re intrinsically eager to reach. However, when it comes to using game like features to promote change we might not find so appealing, gamification doesn’t seem to be a workaround for more substantive solutions.
- Last week Elon Musk said on Twitter that Tesla will not accept bitcoin as payment due to concerns over the “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for bitcoin mining.” This HBR article argues that it is a tricky question to determine how much energy Bitcoin actually consumes.
- Videonet wrote an overview article summarizing the conclusions of several analyst reports on the development of SVOD, AVOD and Pay TV across the world.
Return or Remote Work
With COVID-19 restrictions being eased across the globe, companies are making plans to reopen their offices. According to a recent working paper, many companies are moving to hybrid work arrangements in which employees report to a workplace three days a week. Figuring out what hybrid looks like, however, is becoming quite a challenge. Instead of duplicating office-centric practices, where employees are co-located in a physical workplace, Gartner advices that companies adopt an employee-driven approach that empowers employees to choose where, when and how they work. Several companies, including Google and KPMG, enable staff to design their own working week. At Google, for example, teams can pilot a variety of approaches and adjust policies on an ongoing basis. Hybrid models, however, bear the risk of increasing inequality. By being more visible, office workers might have an advantage over those working from home in connecting, evolving, and adapting. Part of the move to hybrid models, should thus be focused on creating a level playing field for all team members, regardless of their physical location.
