Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast count US Saturdays
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Speaker 2: Welcome to Bloomberg Opinion I Amy Morris. This has so
Speaker 2: far been a scorching hot summer throughout much of the
Speaker 2: world that's got everyone packing a bag for a quick getaway.
Speaker 2: We'll talk to analysts who say, enjoy it while you can,
Speaker 2: and if sports is your thing, a new cricket league
Speaker 2: in the US could prove to be wildly popular. It's
Speaker 2: only just launched and it's already garnered a huge following.
Speaker 2: And as hot as it's been, you really do need
Speaker 2: to stay hydrated. But what's in that diet soda or
Speaker 2: sugar free coffee? We'll drink in the latest health guidance
Speaker 2: on artificial sweeteners from the World Health Organization. Let's get started, though,
Speaker 2: with a trip to the Arctic. A coalition of environmental
Speaker 2: organizations is endorsing President Biden's run for re election. It
Speaker 2: also comes as the president is facing criticism for recent
Speaker 2: environmental decisions like approving oil drilling projects on protected lands
Speaker 2: in Arctic Alaska. At the league's annual Capital Dinner in Washington,
Speaker 2: d C. President Biden said he knows his administration has
Speaker 2: more to do on the environment.
Speaker 3: Get into one hundred percent clean energy by twenty thirty five,
Speaker 3: moving all electric vehicles in the future of mege America
Speaker 3: only five hundred thousand EV charging station coast to coast,
Speaker 3: conserving thirty percent of our lands and waters by twenty thirty.
Speaker 2: But as we are about to learn, drilling in the
Speaker 2: Arctic is no small endeavor. Let's find out more with
Speaker 2: Bloomberg opinion columnist Liam Denning, who covers energy and commodities,
Speaker 2: and he joins us. Now. Now, Liam, you had mentioned
Speaker 2: in your column that someone described to you that drilling
Speaker 2: for oil in the Arctic is like drilling on the moon.
Speaker 4: Tell me about that, Well, you certainly appreciate that when
Speaker 4: you actually go to the north slope of Alaska. So
Speaker 4: the way I went was I flew into Anchorage and
Speaker 4: then took another flight two hours north. It's a pretty
Speaker 4: epic commute for the all workers who had that way.
Speaker 4: You fly past Denali, over the Alaskan interior, and then
Speaker 4: over the Brooks Range, which is kind of where the
Speaker 4: Arctic Circle starts, and so the trees end and you
Speaker 4: come out on the other side of the Brooks Range
Speaker 4: and you're met with this, you know, quite unique flat
Speaker 4: landscape of you know, lots of snow and ice, tundra,
Speaker 4: strange polygonal pools that form on the surface. And then
Speaker 4: as you get closer to the coast, which is where
Speaker 4: the all fields are, you begin to spot these small
Speaker 4: kind of outposts of industrial activity. Although they're on land,
Speaker 4: they what they look like to me was really almost
Speaker 4: like an archipelago of islands. Their man made gravel paths
Speaker 4: where work takes place, where the rigs operate. But there's
Speaker 4: some gravel roads there, but they're almost they're largely cut off.
Speaker 4: And I would say when when when that oor man
Speaker 4: described it as drilling for oil on the Moon, I mean,
Speaker 4: in some ways he did mean that that the landscape
Speaker 4: is very odd, and you know, it's very cold, obviously,
Speaker 4: particularly during winter. But I think what he was really
Speaker 4: getting at was just how remote it feels. And when
Speaker 4: you're there, you get this sense that you're quite cut
Speaker 4: off from the outside world.
Speaker 2: You spending time up there have been able to file
Speaker 2: several columns for the Bloomberg Terminal about some of your experiences,
Speaker 2: and it's all based on climate change in geopolitics, changing
Speaker 2: the strategic landscape of the High North. So how is
Speaker 2: this now impacting the search for oil and gas?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so if you maybe a little history will help.
Speaker 4: So oil was discovered in large quantities on the North
Speaker 4: Slope at the end of the sixties, but because of
Speaker 4: lingering unresolved issues around Native Alaskans claims on the land,
Speaker 4: and because of at that time the recent oil spill
Speaker 4: of Santa Barbara in California, development of the oil fields
Speaker 4: that did not go ahead. They were mired in legal
Speaker 4: disputes and environmental disputes. What changed things was the nineteen
Speaker 4: seventy three oil shock. So suddenly it became imperative to
Speaker 4: develop US oil resources to help offset the power of OPEC.
Speaker 4: And so what you saw in nineteen seventy three was
Speaker 4: that Congress effectively force the construction of the Trans Alaska Pipeline,
Speaker 4: effectively ended all the legal disputes via an Act of
Speaker 4: Congress and the building of that pipeline, which takes oil
Speaker 4: from the North Slope down to Valdez on Alaska's ice
Speaker 4: free southern coast that enabled development. And so you see,
Speaker 4: although Alaska and oil is not necessarily the cheapest or
Speaker 4: the easiest to get, there is a lot of it
Speaker 4: and it's on home turf, so strategic considerations allowed for
Speaker 4: its development, and in some ways we're seeing a bit
Speaker 4: of that again today. You know, if you think about
Speaker 4: where oil development is on the Alaska North Slope, now,
Speaker 4: you know, we've really had several decades of decline in Alaska.
Speaker 4: It used to be producing more than two million barrels
Speaker 4: a day. It's now down to about four hundred thousand
Speaker 4: or so barrels a day. But we saw President Biden's
Speaker 4: administration recently approved the Willow Project, their highly controversial project.
Speaker 4: Certainly the Biden administration's body language was that it didn't
Speaker 4: really want to approve it. But I think Russia's invasion
Speaker 4: of Ukraine and what that did to energy markets last
Speaker 4: year changed the equation in kind of an echo of
Speaker 4: what happened in the early nineteen seventies.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg opinion columnist Liam Denning on the booms and busts
Speaker 2: of drilling for oil in Alaska that it does seem
Speaker 2: like a pendulum swinging there. Liam and there's plenty of
Speaker 2: oil and gas in the Arctic. There's also this very
Speaker 2: loud argument for leaving it there, which makes perfect sense.
Speaker 2: But is anybody listening to that? Because even if President Biden,
Speaker 2: who as you described, didn't seem like a real hundred
Speaker 2: percent wanted to and still yet said okay, let's just
Speaker 2: go ahead and do it, is there a race to
Speaker 2: drill there? Is there an overwhelming necessity? Is that the
Speaker 2: lesser of two evils walk me through that?
Speaker 4: So I think it's that is the absolutely central question
Speaker 4: about all of this. I think the first thing to
Speaker 4: say is that when although there is a lot of
Speaker 4: oil and gas believed to be under the Arctic, and
Speaker 4: not not just in you know, under US territory, but
Speaker 4: obviously also under Russia, Canada and Norway other Arctic countries,
Speaker 4: I'm very skeptical whenever people talk about a scramble for
Speaker 4: anything in the Arctic, because nothing happens there quickly, because
Speaker 4: of the harsh environment, because of the remoteness. You know,
Speaker 4: just to give you a sense, most of the oil
Speaker 4: and gas that's believed to be in under Alaska is
Speaker 4: actually under the waters offshore. A lot of that hasn't
Speaker 4: been developed because it's very hard to develop oil and
Speaker 4: gas in a sea where you know, suddenly everything freezes
Speaker 4: up and your platform is surrounded by ice. I did
Speaker 4: see from the air one project there, the North Star project,
Speaker 4: it's just off the coast near Prude Bay. From awarding
Speaker 4: the lease to the first barrel of oil being produced
Speaker 4: from that field, it took twenty two years, and most
Speaker 4: companies simply cannot take that kind of duration risk or
Speaker 4: the cost involved to do that. So I think the
Speaker 4: first thing to say is there's unlikely to be a
Speaker 4: scramble for oil and gas in the Arctic, just because
Speaker 4: it's too hard to do anything and it takes too long. Now,
Speaker 4: on the other question of you know, why would we
Speaker 4: develop it at all when we're staring down the barrel
Speaker 4: of climate change, I think Alaska symbolizes, you know, a
Speaker 4: broader issue for all major energy consuming countries, which is
Speaker 4: balancing that need to address this inexorable issue of climate
Speaker 4: change with immediate issues of energy security. And so, you know,
Speaker 4: just taking it back to President Biden and Willow, you know,
Speaker 4: last year when all price is spiked on the back
Speaker 4: of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. You know, we saw
Speaker 4: in nominal terms, we saw the highest average gasoline prices
Speaker 4: this country has ever seen, and in response, the President
Speaker 4: released barrels one hundred and eighty million barrels from the
Speaker 4: Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Now, I think it would have been
Speaker 4: very difficult politically at least for him to then turn
Speaker 4: around and say, well, we need to release these emergency
Speaker 4: barrels to deal with our immediate needs, but I'm not
Speaker 4: going to approve this project that actually provides US based
Speaker 4: oil to meet our country's needs. And I think, you know,
Speaker 4: Willow isn't going to be the last time that we
Speaker 4: faced that dilemma, because the fact is, we have a
Speaker 4: system right now that is still overwhelmingly dependent on fossil fuels.
Speaker 4: Their share of our energy system is coming down, but
Speaker 4: it's coming down pretty gradually. And really, when we talk about,
Speaker 4: you know, an energy transition, the main thing we need
Speaker 4: to transition is our demand is how do we use energy?
Speaker 4: You know, if you cut off oil supply and cause
Speaker 4: prices to spike, yes you will. You'll cause people to
Speaker 4: change their behavior, but in a very disruptive and importantly
Speaker 4: politically unhelpful way. And you know, even for a president
Speaker 4: like Joe Biden, who wants to transform the economy in
Speaker 4: a decarbonized way. He has to consider, you know, how
Speaker 4: elections are going to go every two years in order
Speaker 4: to keep that project going.
Speaker 2: Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion colonist. He covers energy
Speaker 2: and commodities. Want you to stay with us. We're going
Speaker 2: to leave the frosty cold temperatures of the Arctic for
Speaker 2: the scorch heat of this summer travel season. You're listening
Speaker 2: to Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast. Catch us Saturdays
Speaker 1: at one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com,
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen
Speaker 1: on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris, and we
Speaker 2: are deep into the summer travel season. Higher prices don't
Speaker 2: seem to be slowing anyone down. Families are packing up
Speaker 2: the car, couples are booking the flights, and the next
Speaker 2: few months are expected to be a blowout for jet setting.
Speaker 2: But maybe you want to enjoy it while it lasts,
Speaker 2: because this could all be a prelude to customers raining
Speaker 2: in their wanderlust. We welcome Bloomberg opinion columnist Andrea Felstad,
Speaker 2: who covers consumer goods and the retail industry. Andrea, tell
Speaker 2: us what you've found, because right now it looks like
Speaker 2: nothing is stopping us. We've got all this pent up
Speaker 2: vacation time energy and we have to burn it.
Speaker 5: That's right, that is still the case. I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: travel is still very much in demand. Some research from
Speaker 5: PwC earlier in the year found that, you know, customers
Speaker 5: would cut back on like many many other things before
Speaker 5: they cut back on the holiday. That being said, we
Speaker 5: are starting to see a few little indications of cracks
Speaker 5: in that demand now. PwC did some follow up research
Speaker 5: in June and it's really interesting because one of the
Speaker 5: things they've noticed is that Britain's are booking later. I mean,
Speaker 5: this has been a trend ever since the pandemic that
Speaker 5: people hold off from booking later. So it has been
Speaker 5: an ongoing trend. But you would think by now it
Speaker 5: would start to normalize. What we've seen is actually the opposite,
Speaker 5: that we're starting to see more late booking, and this
Speaker 5: is because of uncertainty over household finances. I mean, as
Speaker 5: in the US. You know, also in Britain we've had,
Speaker 5: like you know, a cost of living crisis. We've had
Speaker 5: high energy, food bills. They are starting to sort of
Speaker 5: moderate a little bit. The thing that is now coming
Speaker 5: up that is worrying consumer goods companies it is the
Speaker 5: interest rate environment. You've got a million people who need
Speaker 5: to refinance their mortgage this year. They're facing significantly higher
Speaker 5: costs and so you know, some of them are actually
Speaker 5: waiting to see if they should book the holiday. The
Speaker 5: other thing is, and this is the case in the US,
Speaker 5: there was also some research from destination analysts and we've
Speaker 5: seen a similar thing in the US about sticker shop
Speaker 5: for prices. You know, you've probably noted that holidays have
Speaker 5: gone up. You know, holidays and flights have become much
Speaker 5: more expensive, and some consumers are holding off to see
Speaker 5: can I afford to go away and will the price
Speaker 5: come down. They're waiting, you know, perhaps you know, a
Speaker 5: last minute deal, or they're saving up to book. They're
Speaker 5: also waiting because last year and I think in the
Speaker 5: US you've had some this year, but in Europe last
Speaker 5: year we had really bad disruption to travel. So some
Speaker 5: people are waiting to see if there's going to be
Speaker 5: a repeat of that this year. Before they booked their holidays.
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask you about that. I remember last year,
Speaker 2: all the delays and the canceled flights. I actually wound
Speaker 2: up getting tangled up and all of that. It was
Speaker 2: a nightmare. So and just to read book a flight.
Speaker 2: So my question is Number one, did that damage that relationship?
Speaker 2: Is that part of the reason why people are kind
Speaker 2: of holding back from booking these flights because there's a
Speaker 2: little trust issue there. And number two is all of
Speaker 2: this something we sort of view through the lens of
Speaker 2: the pandemic. Is that the yardstick now that we are
Speaker 2: measuring all of this by pre pandemic and post pandemic.
Speaker 5: So thirteen percent of the people that were holding off
Speaker 5: from traveling, according to PwC, was in case sorry, seventeen
Speaker 5: percent was if there is disruption. Thirteen percent was if
Speaker 5: there are travel restrictions. But so seventeen percent of the
Speaker 5: people that have that I haven't booked are doing so
Speaker 5: because they're waiting to see whether there is that disruption.
Speaker 5: It's definitely worrying people in Europe. It does seem like
Speaker 5: it's calmed down this year, so that might encourage people
Speaker 5: to book. And in terms of the question about the pandemic, yes,
Speaker 5: we are seeing all this from the lens of the pandemic.
Speaker 5: We were all cooped up, lockdown, we couldn't travel, and
Speaker 5: because of that, people really valued their travel. So they're
Speaker 5: sort of signs that they're not spending as much on
Speaker 5: experience on things, but they're spending more on experiences meals
Speaker 5: out travel. And when I was researching my column on
Speaker 5: where interest rates would hit people, a few people I
Speaker 5: spoke to said anywhere but travel. But it does seem
Speaker 5: even within the confines of that that there are some
Speaker 5: cracks emerging and some people are being a little bit
Speaker 5: more cautious with travel. I think this summer will still
Speaker 5: be really really good for the industry. Lots of people
Speaker 5: are but they're prepared to pay. But I think going
Speaker 5: forwards that the autumn winter season and in to next summer,
Speaker 5: we may see, you know, that might not be quite strong.
Speaker 2: And we are talking with Bloomberg Opinion columnist Andrea Felstad
Speaker 2: about how travel may not be the same after this summer.
Speaker 2: What are you seeing as far as the impact on
Speaker 2: the travel industry. Are they feeling it? Are they buckling
Speaker 2: up for what may be to come. Are they kind
Speaker 2: of enjoying all the tickets and all the traveling now.
Speaker 5: They're definitely enjoying all the ticket prices and the holiday
Speaker 5: prices now. But that this PwC research had some quite
Speaker 5: interesting factors, and also some other tour operators were talking
Speaker 5: about some some slight impacts that we're seeing. So the
Speaker 5: Thomas Cook which is is now an online a travel
Speaker 5: travel travel company, they found that there was a bit
Speaker 5: of change on what people were booking. They were they
Speaker 5: were maybe going for different destinations and there were maybe
Speaker 5: choosing slightly cheaper destinations. So they were going to like
Speaker 5: mainland Spain, which is perhaps a bit cheaper. It's around
Speaker 5: twenty percent cheaper than the Balaric Islands or the Canary Islands.
Speaker 5: So they're they're they're still going somewhere that's lots of
Speaker 5: family fun, but it's cheaper. The other thing we are seeing,
Speaker 5: and this was in the in some of the short
Speaker 5: term holiday lets from air DNA, which tracks the market,
Speaker 5: is that they're seeing quite a lot of bookings for
Speaker 5: Septmber and October. So because of the prices are so
Speaker 5: high for the summer, they're extending through to those later months.
Speaker 5: We're also seeing this in the States as well. There
Speaker 5: was some research and destination analysts that also found that
Speaker 5: those shoulder months were were quite popular.
Speaker 2: I can I can vouch for that summer. I was
Speaker 2: not able to travel because of the price, so I
Speaker 2: extended it out to September, and instead of blanging a
Speaker 2: whole week, I just booked a fat weekend.
Speaker 5: You know, exactly, That's exactly what we'll see. We'll see,
Speaker 5: you know, people trading down from from weeks to weekends.
Speaker 5: But then saying that obviously sort of sort of also
Speaker 5: surveyed travel operators and the one area they were less
Speaker 5: concerned about they were most optimistic about was the luxury
Speaker 5: and high end because you know, as we've seen in
Speaker 5: the luxury industry, wealthier people were hit less by everyday
Speaker 5: costs and so they can still afford to travel. So
Speaker 5: it will be in that mid market to value and
Speaker 5: that we might see some of these changes.
Speaker 2: Andrew, before we let you go, let me ask you
Speaker 2: about how long it may take before we get back
Speaker 2: to normal, or is there a normal anymore? Do we
Speaker 2: have a new baseline because of the pandemic and all
Speaker 2: of the commotion and chaos that it has caused within
Speaker 2: not just our own personal lives and our paychecks and
Speaker 2: the way we spend our leisure time, but the travel
Speaker 2: industry as well. Is this a new normal? Yes?
Speaker 5: I think it is a new normal, and it all
Speaker 5: comes back to how much we miss travel during the pandemic.
Speaker 5: So even if things slow down, there will still be
Speaker 5: an element I think of prioritizing travel over other things
Speaker 5: because we were also cooped up that Having said that,
Speaker 5: we'll have had two good years of travel, so perhaps
Speaker 5: next year it might not be such a priority. I
Speaker 5: still think it will be quite a priority, maybe not
Speaker 5: quite as much.
Speaker 2: Andrea Felstad is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist who covers consumer
Speaker 2: goods and the retail industry. And don't forget We're available
Speaker 2: as a podcast on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Speaker 2: And we're learning more about Ross Perot Junior of Dallas
Speaker 2: looking to bankroll a new cricket league in America, And
Speaker 2: as it turns out, this isn't the first time we've
Speaker 2: seen a Texas billionaire looking to launch a new cricket
Speaker 2: league in the US, joining us now to talk it
Speaker 2: through Bloomberg Opinion columnist Bobby Gosh, Bobby covers foreign affairs,
Speaker 2: and he's going to help us out with this. Okay, Bobby,
Speaker 2: what is the plan?
Speaker 6: Rosparrow Junior and a bunch of Indian tech leaders, including
Speaker 6: Sachia Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft or all bank rolling
Speaker 6: through the tune of one hundred and twenty million dollars.
Speaker 6: Major League Cricket America's first big attempt to create a
Speaker 6: proper cricketing league. It kicks off, if that's the right expression,
Speaker 6: on Friday, July thirteenth in Dallas, Texas, at a cricket Stadium,
Speaker 6: America's first proper cricket stadium, and it will feature six
Speaker 6: teams and made up primarily of players of Indian origin,
Speaker 6: Indian or subcontinental origin, although there is a fairt mattering
Speaker 6: of Australians and Englishmen and people from the Caribbean in
Speaker 6: those teams. So this is a big gamble on cricket
Speaker 6: taking route in America, but it's not predicated on cricket
Speaker 6: becoming an American sport to challenge let's say baseball, which
Speaker 6: is its distant cousin, or football or any other major
Speaker 6: American sport. This one is directed primarily at the diasporas
Speaker 6: from countries where cricket was already a passion and primarily
Speaker 6: the Indian diaspora.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's dig into that. We want to start off
Speaker 2: with the history of this. We've seen this before, haven't we.
Speaker 6: Well, yes, about a decade ago, another Texas billionaire, Alan Stanford,
Speaker 6: talked up a big plan to support cricket in the
Speaker 6: United States. He had a business, he was a wealth
Speaker 6: manager based in Antiga in the Caribbean, where cricket was
Speaker 6: pretty big, and he caught the bug and he felt
Speaker 6: like he could bring that sport to the United States.
Speaker 6: Of course, famously, he then got caught essentially running a
Speaker 6: ponzi scheme and was cent to jail for one hundred
Speaker 6: and ten years, and his dreams of bringing cricket to
Speaker 6: America sort of went by the wayside. This time, I
Speaker 6: think it's a little more realistic because a great deal
Speaker 6: has changed in that ten year period, including the size
Speaker 6: and more importantly, perhaps the wealth of the Indian immigrant community.
Speaker 6: There are now two points to three million Indian immigrants
Speaker 6: in this country. They are the most wealthy of all
Speaker 6: the many diasporas in America, and that makes and they
Speaker 6: come preloaded with cricket. I mean, I am Indian American myself.
Speaker 6: I grew up in India. And if you did, then
Speaker 6: you were already programmed to love cricket and to be
Speaker 6: passionate about it. And that's what the founders of this
Speaker 6: new league are counting on. They're counting on people like
Speaker 6: me to watch on television, to pay for tickets, to
Speaker 6: go and see games at stadiums, and bring our passion
Speaker 6: and maybe along the way convert one of one or
Speaker 6: two of our non cricketing American friends into the spot.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you are already a fan, like you say,
Speaker 2: it's already baked into you and those around you. So
Speaker 2: do you feel like this has a shot? Are people
Speaker 2: going to support this? Is there any risk that it
Speaker 2: may somehow, and I hope you follow what I mean
Speaker 2: when I say this somehow be corrupted by being Americanized.
Speaker 6: There's not much risk of that because the Americanization of
Speaker 6: cricket ironically has already happened. It happened strangely enough in
Speaker 6: India when a big cricket league it's called the IPL,
Speaker 6: the Indian Premier League, was launched eight or nine years
Speaker 6: ago in India. It was done specifically with very American
Speaker 6: style hoopla Indian cricket teams. In fact, some of them
Speaker 6: actually employed American cheerleaders to go over and teach Indians
Speaker 6: how to do cheerleading. So, if you like, the Americanization
Speaker 6: of cricket has already happened. It's the question of the
Speaker 6: cricketization of America.
Speaker 2: Now, oh, that's interesting way of looking at it. Okay,
Speaker 2: So help me figure out how this is going to work.
Speaker 2: Why parole, why cricket? How is this going to work financially?
Speaker 6: So most of the founders, most of the sponsors and
Speaker 6: and owners of teams of the six teams are Indians
Speaker 6: and Indian Americans. Rosboro is kind of the odd man
Speaker 6: out because his business partner is Indian and sort of,
Speaker 6: if you like, inculcated him into the culture of cricket,
Speaker 6: and he sort of he recognized not only the passion
Speaker 6: that Indian Americans bring to the sport, but he also,
Speaker 6: as a good businessman, saw a business opportunity. There's a
Speaker 6: very large Indian and South Asian generally community in the
Speaker 6: Texas Fort Worth area, and he saw the opportunity there
Speaker 6: was a chance to get in on the ground floor
Speaker 6: of what could become the next soccer over maybe twenty
Speaker 6: thirty years, and you know, we follow the arc of
Speaker 6: how soccer evolved in this country from a niche sport
Speaker 6: into something more substantial. He's counting on cricket doing the
Speaker 6: same thing, riding on the back just as soccer sort
Speaker 6: of road on the passion of Latin American communities living
Speaker 6: in the United States. He's counting on cricket doing the
Speaker 6: same on the back of Indian Americans, Pakistani Americans, British Americans,
Speaker 6: Australian Americans, and Afro Cuba, Afro Caribbean Americans. All of
Speaker 6: these communities. If you add them all up, we're talking
Speaker 6: about anywhere between ten and twenty million people, which is
Speaker 6: not a small number.
Speaker 2: Can you compare it with anything in the US. I
Speaker 2: don't mean the sport itself, but the passion.
Speaker 6: Like all passions, you know, sports fans are nuts about
Speaker 6: their sport. With Indians and cricket, it's I would argue,
Speaker 6: it's a little more intense because in India cricket is
Speaker 6: not just the most popular sport, but it's almost cultural
Speaker 6: in a way that I suppose once upon a time,
Speaker 6: baseball used to be in America. America has many different
Speaker 6: sporting passions. There's baseball, there's football, there's hockey, there's basketball.
Speaker 6: These are big sports with big followings. Americans interested in
Speaker 6: sports can choose from several. In India, until fairly recently,
Speaker 6: cricket was almost literally the only game it out. A
Speaker 6: friend of mine, a sports journalist back in India, used
Speaker 6: to say, if you count the top ten most popular
Speaker 6: sports in India, one through nine, cricket. And so Indians
Speaker 6: are single minded in their passion for cricket because for
Speaker 6: a very long time they really didn't have success in
Speaker 6: any other sporting arena. That makes it. And don't forget
Speaker 6: there's a billion plus in billion and a quarter billion,
Speaker 6: one point four billion Indians and so it's the single
Speaker 6: largest most populated country in the world now, so that's
Speaker 6: a big number. The promoters of Major League cricket in
Speaker 6: the United States are also counting on Indians back in
Speaker 6: India to watch on television. So the television rights, the
Speaker 6: advertising potential that comes from such a big potential television audience,
Speaker 6: all of those factor into the chances of this becoming
Speaker 6: a success.
Speaker 2: That's what I wanted to ask you about. But it
Speaker 2: occurs to me that this particular endeavor they don't care
Speaker 2: whether somebody like me, Like I'm a big football fan, right,
Speaker 2: so I've never seen cricket in my life. I would
Speaker 2: be interested in learning because I dig sports, but I'm
Speaker 2: not the audience. And I wonder if you were to
Speaker 2: indoctrinate me, or to bring me along, or to help
Speaker 2: sort of teach me the way. What should we look
Speaker 2: for in a typical cricket match. What's exciting?
Speaker 6: Well, cricket comes in very different formats, and the longest
Speaker 6: format or it is stretched over five days. The good
Speaker 6: news is this is not that this is a short
Speaker 6: format called T twenty. It takes about the same It
Speaker 6: takes about the same amount of time of your average
Speaker 6: baseball game. So it's a short version of the sport.
Speaker 6: It's a nice afternoon, a nice evening out. The ticket
Speaker 6: prices at the stadiums will be quite low, twenty thirty dollars.
Speaker 6: You know, there'll be some bleacher seating, but there'll also
Speaker 6: be some seating on the grass, and you can bring
Speaker 6: a picnic basket and have a lovely day. And the
Speaker 6: sponsors and the promoters will make special effort to try
Speaker 6: and educate a non cricketing audience. But they're being realistic.
Speaker 6: They realize that this ain't happening overnight. I mean, look
Speaker 6: how long it took for soccer to take root in
Speaker 6: this country. And soccer is a much simpler sport for
Speaker 6: a newbie to absorb. Cricket is, let's be clear, very
Speaker 6: complex and has lots of rules, and some of those
Speaker 6: rules are not intuitive and don't make sense. So it'll
Speaker 6: be a long time twenty thirty forty years before, realistically,
Speaker 6: if ever, Americans who didn't have cricket in their blood
Speaker 6: so to speak, take to the sport. But the important
Speaker 6: point is that for MLC to be a success, that
Speaker 6: doesn't have to happen. As long as there are sufficient
Speaker 6: numbers of diaspora and as long as there is a
Speaker 6: big television audience who can buy into this, that's going
Speaker 6: to be good enough.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Bobby Goes and a Bloomberg Opinion
Speaker 2: columnist who covers foreign affairs. Bloomberg Opinion continues with yet
Speaker 2: one more reason why maybe we should all lay off
Speaker 2: the sugar, especially if it's in the form of a
Speaker 2: diet soda. This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast. Catch us Saturdays
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Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. The World
Speaker 2: Health Organization has classified aspartame as a possible carcinogen last week,
Speaker 2: but even before that ruling, there were already some pretty
Speaker 2: good reasons to avoid products that contained the artificial sweetener.
Speaker 2: Joining us now, Bloomberg Opinion columnist Faye Lamb Fay just
Speaker 2: bottom line this for us. What does this mean for
Speaker 2: diet soda drinkers.
Speaker 7: Well, I was actually kind of surprised it wasn't already
Speaker 7: on this list of possible carcinogens, because that includes anything
Speaker 7: where there's even you know, a few studies where a
Speaker 7: rat got cancer, the radiation from your cell phone, who
Speaker 7: considers a possible carcinogen. So sometimes something that's just where
Speaker 7: there's a health scare and a lot of studies are done,
Speaker 7: you know, inevitably some rat gets cancer somewhere and that
Speaker 7: can get on this list. So I don't consider that
Speaker 7: list to be you know, a reason necessarily to avoid something.
Speaker 7: But I think it does raise a little bit of
Speaker 7: awareness that these sweeteners are you know, they're unnatural chemicals,
Speaker 7: and some people really drink a lot of diet soda.
Speaker 2: So is that something we should keep in perspective. Then,
Speaker 2: when you were talking about the term possible carcinogen, what
Speaker 2: actually that would mean?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean it means that a few studies have
Speaker 7: hinted that there might be a link with some cancers.
Speaker 7: I think in this case it's mostly animal studies. I
Speaker 7: don't think there are any human epidemiological studies that show
Speaker 7: that humans who drink diet soda are more likely get cancer.
Speaker 7: So what fascinated me was that there are some human
Speaker 7: studies that show different health harms and problems with diet soda,
Speaker 7: including some that may explain why people often don't lose
Speaker 7: weight when they switch diet soda.
Speaker 2: I wanted to actually ask about that. Since aspartain has
Speaker 2: been introduced in the diet, particularly in the United States,
Speaker 2: have we seen improvements in health less diabetes, lower OBCD rates?
Speaker 7: No, No, not at all, And it didn't seem to
Speaker 7: help lower blood sugar. The thing is that people would
Speaker 7: go for diet soda. For the reasons people usually would
Speaker 7: choose those is because they think, well, they're not fattening,
Speaker 7: they're not going to raise my blood sugar. I'm not
Speaker 7: gonna they're not going to raise my risk of getting
Speaker 7: type two diabetes.
Speaker 2: Did they compare anything else, I'm just assuming that they did.
Speaker 2: But I'm curious how aspartame may be different from other
Speaker 2: artificial sweeteners like zacharin or stevia, or even natural ones
Speaker 2: like honey or agave syrup.
Speaker 7: Yeah. Well, the study that I wrote about that I
Speaker 7: thought was fascinating, they actually looked at four sweeteners. They
Speaker 7: looked at saccharin, superlose aspartame, and stevia. They did look
Speaker 7: at these natural ones, which I think act a lot
Speaker 7: more like sugar. You know, they're very similar to sugar.
Speaker 7: They're chemically similar. These these these the four that they studied,
Speaker 7: were chemically distinct from sugar. So they found that they
Speaker 7: within a couple of weeks, they actually had an effect
Speaker 7: on your microbiome. That the bacteria, the friendly bacteria that
Speaker 7: help you digest your food and live in your gut,
Speaker 7: that they seem to have an effect on that. And
Speaker 7: it looks like the artificial sweeteners actually have an adverse
Speaker 7: effect on blood sugar control, and blood sugar control is
Speaker 7: a big factor in obesity and type two diabetes, so
Speaker 7: apparently these artificial sweeteners can actually have some of the
Speaker 7: same types of harmful effects as sugar.
Speaker 2: Bottom line is perhaps just getting rid of those diet
Speaker 2: colas out of your diet if what you're trying to
Speaker 2: do is lose weight and watch your sugar intake.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you know, I think this researcher said he drinks water,
Speaker 7: I'd like coffee iced coffee. There've been a lot of
Speaker 7: studies on that and so far nothing really harmful has
Speaker 7: turned up. So you know, I guess it all depends
Speaker 7: on how much sugar you put in that ice coffe.
Speaker 7: At least you have the option to put either none
Speaker 7: or very little in whereas when you reach front coke,
Speaker 7: it's going to have either it's either going to have
Speaker 7: a lot of sugar or if you go with the diet,
Speaker 7: it's going to have the aspertain in it.
Speaker 2: Faith Lam is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and host of
Speaker 2: Follow the Science podcast and That Does It. For this
Speaker 2: week's Bloomberg Opinion, we are produced by Eric mollow and
Speaker 2: you can find all of these columns on the Bloomberg Terminal.
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Speaker 2: and global business headlines are coming up. I maybe Morris,
Speaker 2: this is Bloomberg.