News Information and Media Site: Byers Market: Mike Bloomberg moves up; Bernie Sanders spooks the Valley

February 13, 2020

By DYLAN BYERS in Los Angeles &

AHIZA GARCÍA-HODGES in San Francisco

Good morning. 🌴 Jeff Bezos has bought the Warner Estate in Beverly Hills from David Geffen for a record-high $165 million. The nine-acre mansion was originally built for Jack Warner in the 1930s.

🏗️ The Amazon chief has also bought a plot of undeveloped land in Los Angeles from the estate of Paul Allen for $90 million.

🛩️ The Map: Bezos now owns three homes in Beverly Hills, three apartments in New York, mansions in the greater Seattle area and Washington, D.C., and 300,000 acres of land in West Texas.

Join the Market.

Brett Carlsen/Getty

🇺🇸 Election 2020

Here comes Mike Bloomberg

Moving the Market: Mike Bloomberg is fast joining Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg at center stage in the Democratic primary process, fueled by his unprecedented ad spend, a fractured vote in Iowa and New Hampshire, and the apparent collapse of Joe Biden's presidential campaign.

• The big picture: Bloomberg's bid was predicated on a number of unconventional bets — that he could avoid the early states, force himself into the conversation through aggressive ad spending and capitalize on an early lack of consensus in the party. Those bets are paying off.

The latest: Bloomberg has "rocketed into third place nationally... in a series of recent Democratic presidential primary polls," our colleague Jon Allen reports. "His name is constantly on the lips of rival candidates, political insiders and pundits," as well as that of President Donald Trump.

• "His potential to reshape the race has led his Democratic opponents, as well as President Trump, to begin focusing on him in earnest, even though he is not contesting Nevada and South Carolina, the next two states to vote," WaPo's Michael Scherer writes.

• Bloomberg also continues to spend heavily on both television and digital advertising. Our colleague David Ingram notes he has spent "more than $1 million a day on average over the past two weeks on Facebook. That's five times more than Trump spent during the same period."

What's next: Bloomberg may actually stand center stage with Sanders and Buttigieg in the physical sense. He is highly likely to qualify for the NBC News and MSNBC debate on Feb. 19 in Las Vegas, and sources inside the campaign say he is committed to appearing on stage if he qualifies.

• How he gets there: By having at least 10 percent support in four national polls, which is one of three ways candidates can qualify. Bloomberg has already cleared that hurdle in three recent polls.

Bloomberg/Getty

Girding for Battle

Silicon Valley vs. Sanders

Big in the Bay: "Silicon Valley can no longer afford to underestimate [Bernie] Sanders, and its leaders are beginning to reckon with him having a real shot at being the Democratic nominee," Recode's Teddy Schleifer reports.

• The big picture: "Sanders shares many of the exact same positions as [Elizabeth] Warren — he, too, wants to break up Big Tech companies and drastically increase taxes on the richest people, including those in tech — but only now is he tickling the amygdala of Silicon Valley's elite."

View from the Street: "Sanders is just as polarizing as Trump AND he'll ruin our economy and doesn't care about our military," former Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein tweeted this week.

🇺🇸 Larry Ellison for Trump 🇺🇸

Oracle chief Larry Ellison is hosting a "Golf Outing" fundraiser for President Trump next week at his estate in Rancho Mirage, California, per The Desert Sun.

• As Schleifer notes, it's "the most significant display of support from a major tech titan for the president, by far."

Amy Osborne/Getty

Facebook Growth

WhatsApp hits 2 billion users

Moving Menlo: Will Cathcart says Facebook's WhatsApp messaging service now has more than 2 billion active users worldwide, a staggering number nearly on par with the roughly 2.5 billion people who use the Facebook app itself, WSJ's Jeff Horwitz reports.

• What's next: "In announcing the milestone... Cathcart said... that the app's global popularity underscores why the company needs to fight for its users' ability to communicate through encrypted channels."

• "For all of human history, people have been able to communicate privately with each other," Cathcart told Horwitz. "And we don't think that should go away in a modern society."

The big picture: WhatsApp's commitment to encryption has made it harder for Facebook to make money off the service and landed it in uncomfortable clashes with the U.S. and other governments over safety issues. But both Cathcart and Mark Zuckerberg remain committed to encryption.

Market Links

• Evan Spiegel tests a big new Snapchat redesign (Verge)

• Tim Sweeney goes to war with Apple and Google (VB)

• Rich Pierson raises $93 million at Headspace (Axios)

• Katie Rosman investigates the chaos at Condé (NYT)

• Stuart Emmrich shares his vision for Vogue.com (Daily)

Bloomberg/Getty

ViacomCBS

Bob Bakish plans new layoffs

Talk of Tinseltown: ViacomCBS chief Bob Bakish is preparing for two rounds of layoffs, the first of which will affect around 100 people and could take place as early as Feb. 26, Variety's Daniel Holloway reports. A second round is planned to begin on or around March 31.

• The big picture: "Restructuring among the rank and file has long been anticipated... Viacom and CBS [had] signaled that the merger [of the two companies] would yield $500 million in cost savings."

Bloomberg/Getty

The Streaming Wars

Anthony Wood at the brink

Hard bargains: Roku chief Anthony Wood has been engaged in high-stakes battles with media companies like Fox and NBC to try to extract more money from the services, The Information's Tom Dotan and Jessica Toonkel report. The results so far have been mixed.

• "Earlier this month, Roku dropped apps owned by Fox on the eve of the Super Bowl. ... The dispute threatened to deprive Roku customers of the ability to watch the Super Bowl. The two companies quickly reached a deal that restored Fox to Roku's service."

• "In late 2018... NBCUniversal and Roku got into a heated battle as they negotiated to renew an agreement letting Roku stream NBCU apps... The two companies reached a deal without causing any disruption to service." (NBCUNiversal is the parent company of NBC News.)

The big picture: "The fights between Roku and entertainment companies is the latest sign that longstanding wrangling between the content and distribution sides of the television world have migrated to streaming video."

🏀 What's next: Ahiza is en route to Chicago for NBA All Star Weekend and Baron Davis' Business Inside the Game summit, where she'll be moderating panels with Davis and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, among others.

See you tomorrow.