Cricket, flag football among 5 sports added to 2028 Olympics

The classic question, “if you had to try and qualify for an Olympic sport, which one would you choose?” just got a few more options. Every Olympic host nation has the right to add more sports to the games. In Sydney 2000, tae kwon do, trampoline, triathlon and synchronised diving were added for the first time. In Tokyo 2021, it was karate, surfing, skateboarding and climbing. 

The organising committee for Los Angeles 2028 has just added 5 new sports to the roster - cricket, flag football (a non-tackle version of NFL), baseball and softball, lacrosse and squash. For those wondering how you fit a whole cricket competition in an Olympics, it will be condensed with reports that the men’s and women’s competition will each have just six teams playing Twenty20. 

Squash in an interesting story. There have been several previous applications to get Olympic status. Finally, it has succeeded. 

The business story behind the sporting headline is fascinating. Reaching olympic status is a boon for all of these sports. For example, the NFL sees flag football’s inclusion as an opportunity to export American football to the world. At the same time, it can also be a boon for the Olympics. Adding cricket to the 2028 Olympics is expected to increase the value of the broadcasting rights in India alone by more than $100 million. 

To make room for these new sports, others must give way. After reaching Olympic status and getting set to debut at Paris 2024, breakdancing will not be returning in 2028. 

All of this movement puts the spotlight on Brisbane 2032. Australian sporting codes are already lobbying organisers to get included in the games. Both rugby union and rugby league are reportedly making bids, meanwhile Rugby 7’s is reportedly already included. Netball is seen as a likely inclusion, although its limited worldwide profile may work against it. Then there are some surprising sports that are lobbying: e-Sports, surf lifesaving, and pickle ball are all being considered. For a complete rundown of sports vying for Brisbane 2032 inclusion, Victoria University recently wrote about the possible inclusions for Brisbane.

Charles Schwab: Millennials want fixed income

This recent survey out of American financial services giant Charles Schwab suggests that as interest rates rise an overwhelming number of young people are turning to fixed income. In fact, they found that younger investors are adopting fixed income investments at a faster rate than older investors (who would naturally be more interested in lower-risk, income paying investment options).

The Schwab data found that millennials have as much as 45% of their portfolios in fixed income investments such as bonds, compared to 31% for Baby Boomers and 37% for Gen X. Similarly, 51% of Millennials said they planned to invest in a fixed income ETF in 2024, compared to 40% for Baby Boomers and 45% for Gen X. 

For the first time in many Millennials’ investing lifetimes, fixed income investments make sense in a portfolio. When fixed income starts paying 6, 7 or even 8%, it starts to become an enticing alternative to stocks and property. And this has been reflected in the increasing assets under management in Australian bond ETFs. 

However, there is an important watch out for anyone thinking about fixed income. It is a big investing universe, and plenty of investment options are still paying well below inflation.

Take Australia’s two largest fixed income ETFs: iShares Core Composite Bond ETF (IAF) and Vanguard Australia Fixed Income Index (VAF). The 12 month trailing yield (i.e. what an investor would’ve received if they’d held the investment for the past year) on the iShares Core Composite Bond ETF is just 1.6%. Similarly, for the Vanguard Australia Fixed Income Index it was a little over 1%.

So when looking for fixed income options, make sure you’re looking under the hood and considering what income products are right for you. And if you’re stuck in an investment that is earning less than 2% a year, it’s important to remember that you can find high interest savings accounts that are paying more than double that today. 

Elon Musk gives X employees one year to replace your bank

Elon Musk continues to take steps towards a dream that he had more than 20 years ago. Before he merged his financial services company with Peter Thiel’s company to create PayPal, Musk dreamed of building an all-in-one financial platform, X.com.

Fast forward 20 years and Musk has bought Twitter and rebranded it X. Now he reportedly has given his team just one year to realise his dreams. 

The company is currently working on securing money transmission licenses across the US so that it can offer financial services. This will be the first step in a long journey to change how people see the platform formerly known as Twitter. 

If he is successful and is able to integrate financial infrastructure into a social media platform, the model to look at what it could become is WeChat in China. Combining social and financial puts the app at the heart of Chinese users lives and has seen a generation of Chinese digital businesses built on top of WeChat’s infrastructure. WeChat is the quintessential super-app.

Many western companies have previously pitched themselves as a future super-app previously, yet none have successfully followed through. However, that same argument was previously made about mass market electric cars and reusable rockets. So we watch and wait, and hope that Elon doesn’t do anything too weird in the meantime. 

An Oil Giant Quietly Ditched the World’s Biggest Carbon Capture Plant

Carbon capture is a technology that has been discussed for years, but has always felt like a fossil fuel industry talking point more than a technology ready for the mainstream. The theory is simple, rather than allowing emissions to find their way into the atmosphere, capture them as they’re created and bury them deep underground. 

Occidental Petroleum, one of the world’s largest oil companies, has been leading the charge on carbon capture. It plans to build a billion-dollar plant, called Stratos, in Texas to do just that. Amazon, Shopify, Airbus and the Houston Texans NFL team are just some of the large companies that have signed up to buy Statos' carbon offsets. Occidental’s CEO has proposed building 100 more plants just like it. It all sounds good, maybe even too good. As this article from Bloomberg explains, this isn’t the first time Occidental has made a big splash about a cutting-edge carbon management technology. 

Travel about 100km down the road in Texas and you’ll come across another Occidental Petroleum plant - Century. Built in 2010 it was set to become the world’s largest example of carbon capture. Fast forward 13 years and Occidental quietly sold off the project for a fraction of what it cost to build. 

Bloomberg has investigated the Century project and found that the plant never operated at more than a third of its capacity. Interestingly, and somewhat reassuringly, it wasn’t because the technology didn’t work. Rather it was because the economics didn’t hold up. 

Economics are a solvable problem. The majority of the world has embraced some form of carbon pricing (either through a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme) that help renewable energy projects that may have marginal economics. The challenge is the United States, and Texas in particular, don’t seem likely to follow the rest of the world including some American states and embrace a market-based mechanism like carbon pricing. 

The International Energy Agency sees carbon capture as a critical technology to achieve net zero by 2050. In fact, current carbon capture capacity globally is 45 million tonnes of CO2 per year, which is just 4% of what the IEA believes the world needs by 2030. So plants like Occidental’s new Stratos plant are critical. But don’t get caught up in the hype. Technologies like carbon capture and clean coal have long promised far more than they’ve delivered, and in the meantime they provide cover for polluters to keep on polluting.

The proof will be in the emissions reduction. Until then, it’s just hot air.