Welcome to Thursday, FutureParty people. In what has to be the funniest apology in modern corporate history, CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity giant behind last week’s debilitating global network outage, has sent an apology letter to its corporate partners that includes a single $10 Uber Eats gift card with the note: “To express our gratitude, your next cup of coffee or late night snack is on us!” The best part is that when people went to use it, the site said the card was canceled and no longer valid. Why do we feel like this will only make things worse?

In other news… pro basketball locks up the richest rights deals yet, Gen Alpha’s favorite meme is going mainstream, and Will Smith wants to make a comeback on the mic.

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• YouTube – A Complete Unknown

• X (Twitter) – Skibidi Toilet 

• Google – MrBeast 

• Reddit – Laura Dern

• TikTok – “Stir Fry” - Migos

• Spotify – “In the Night (feat. Jorja Smith, Amaarae)” - Childish Gambino

.SPORTS.

The NBA and WNBA draft their media rosters

The Future. The NBA and WNBA finalized their TV deals for the next 11 years, and as expected, they’re rich. With sports rights seen as one of the few must-have pieces of programming needed to ensure that networks and streamers stay culturally relevant, the competition was fierce… which shows how including streaming distribution, Hollywood crossovers, and even theme-park access could forever be the special sauce to winning rights.

Star players
Pro basketball just scored some major paydays for its media rights.

• The NBA is getting $76 billion from Disney (80 regular-season games, plenty of playoff matches, the NBA Finals), NBC (100 regular-season games, the All-Star Game, USA Basketball games), and Amazon (66 regular-season games, a Black Friday game).

• The deals include unique benefits like a significant streaming presence on each company’s platform, the ability to make “custom content” with Marvel Studios, and a presence at Walt Disney World.

• The WNBA also made deals with Disney, NBC, and Amazon, consolidating its games to three companies from five (Disney, Amazon, CBS, Scripps’ ION network, and NBA TV were the previous rights holders).

• The deals are valued at a total of $2.2 billion — a fraction of the NBA ones but three times more than the current media-rights deals, thanks to the league’s exploding popularity.

The only company not happy about these deals is Warner Bros. Discovery. TNT has been a long-time home of the NBA and tried to match Amazon’s bid for rights. The NBA says the bid didn’t match, so it went with the tech giant. WBD now plans to sue.

It looks like the competition isn’t over yet.

67.2% of you voted Yes in yesterday’s poll: Do you want to receive universal basic income?

“Only in that it would make me more secure in retirement. I worry about medical bills and a catastrophic ailment. For low-income earners, it’s a big safety net!”

“I have (thankfully) progressed beyond this, but I do approve of such action for those who it will benefit, and I understand just a little of what this complicated subject attempts to address.”

“Who is supposed to pay for this? I’m already paying so much money in taxes. I feel like this is just another kick in the pants to fiscally responsible people.”

.A WORD FROM OUR FRIENDS AT SURF.

Wash your dishes like it’s 2055

Modern dishwashers can do better. They’re designed to handle a random assortment of dishes, not the ones you actually use.

Meet Surf Dishwasher, a newly developed dishwasher that gets it. Surf was created by a rocket propulsion engineer and a computer engineer/designer who helped build Siri at Apple. We don’t know about you, but we would definitely want those two to design our dishwasher.

The Surf Dishwasher has special modules for plates, bowls, cups, and silverware (AKA the things you actually use). It also lets you use a standard washer if you need one. Plus, it gets the job done faster and with reduced water consumption.

Now you can be one of the first Surf Dishwasher owners. Just make a dishwasher pledge on their Kickstarter.

Media, Music, & Entertainment

• Inside Out 2 has surpassed Frozen II as the highest-grossing animated movie of all time, collecting $1.46 billion at the global box office… so far. [Read More]

• Salt Lake City, Utah has been selected as the host city for the Olympics and Paralympic Games in 2034. [Read More]

• Will Smith is officially getting back into music, signing with new independent label SLANG. [Read More]

Fashion & E-Commerce

• The LOEWE x On’s Cloudtilt 2.0 has passed adidas’ Samba as fashion’s favorite sneaker. [Read More]

• Arc’teryx has teamed up with former Google X project Skip on an exoskeleton for hiking, which the companies dub the “ebike for hiking.” [Read More]

• Oakley is releasing an eyewear/headwear hybrid, the “Moonveil,” that feels like something out of Mad Max. [Read More]

Tech, Web3, & AI

• Reddit is officially blocking companies — AI and search engines alike — from scraping content from its platform if they don’t pay up. [Read More]

• Cruise is restarting its autonomous taxi operations in Dallas, Houston, and Phoenix… but it won’t ferry paying passengers yet. [Read More]

• Nvidia has developed a new chip for the Chinese market to skirt around US government regulations. [Read More]

Creator Economy

• 54% of Americans aged 18 to 60 would give up their jobs to be full-time content creators, according to a study from influencer marketing agency IZEA. [Read More]

• Influencer Sydney Nicole Gifford is suing influencer Alyssa Sheil for ripping off her vibe, aesthetic, and styling. [Read More]

• Your guide to the latest workplace viral trend: how to become a company’s “personality hire.” [Read More]

.ENTERTAINMENT.

“Skibidi Toilet” is coming to Hollywood

The Future. Former Paramount Pictures President Adam Goodman and renowned filmmaker Michael Bay plan to bring the Gen Alpha meme “Skibidi Toilet” to Hollywood in the form of a premium TV show or movie. Considering the outsized success of Gen Z’s favorite IP, Five Nights at Freddy’s, expect any potential big-screen adaptation of “Skibidi Toilet” to be a blockbuster.

A-list toilet
The internet meme to major motion picture pipeline may be in full effect.

• Goodman and Bay are working with Alexey “Boom” Gerasimov — the creator of Skibidi Toilet through his “DaFuq!?Boom!” YouTube channel (43 million subscribers) — on a potential TV show or movie through their Invisible Narratives banner.

• Bay has been working closely with Boom on expanding the IP's lore. The planned series or movie may be a hybrid animated/live-action production in the vein of District 9 and John Wick.

• Additionally, Invisible Narratives is the official merchandise partner for the IP, which plans to drop its first product line this fall.

Skibidi Toilet has expanded into more than 70 one-to-five-minute videos featuring an absurd war between Toilets and Cyborgs… which has exploded in popularity with Gen Alpha, especially as Boom, Goodman, and Bay have allowed other YouTube channels and Roblox players to use the IP to expand the world of Skibidi free of charge. Call it collective world-building.

Because of that, Skibidi Toilet now has more online impressions than Marvel, Star Wars, and Harry Potter. So, adults, you may need to take notice.

.A WORD FROM OUR FRIENDS AT CLICK FUNNELS.

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• Read: On the heels of Twisters’ release, the NYT profiles some of the special effects wizards who bring 4DX screenings to life.

• Listen: Possible with Reid Hoffman & Aria Finger chats with actor and investor Ashton Kutcher about how AI is set to transform the entertainment industry.

• Watch: Screenwriter Will Beall chats with Creative Screenwriting about writing two of this year’s biggest crime-comedy hits, Bad Boys: Ride or Die and Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.

Pretty much anyone over the age of 16.

JOBS OF THE WEEK 

Explore a weekly curated list of the latest and greatest opportunities in business, tech, and entertainment. For more listings, check out the complete job board.

On Air Talent
FanDuel
Los Angeles, CA

Head of Product Marketing - AI & Language Models
Cohere
San Francisco, CA

Senior Business Analyst
TikTok
New York, NY

2025 University Graduate - Machine Learning Engineer
Adobe
San Jose, CA

LATEST PODCAST EPISODE

Today, on an extra special bonus episode of Future Forecast, our hosts Boye and Chris sit down with Andrew Kenward, the President and COO of Almost Friday Media. Andrew was an agent at WME in the digital media department at WME before being brought into the Almost Friday universe in 2021. We chat with him about his career, his goals for the brand moving forward, and what it's like working in media today.