When We Were 7-Eleven

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It’s Tuesday, TFP. Now that everyone’s on conclave watch (seriously, that movie couldn’t have come out at a better time), Italy is bracing for an influx of hundreds of thousands of people, who want to see the smoke rise from the Vatican — the signal that a new Pope has, or hasn’t, been chosen. Expedia reported that flight searches to Rome for the dates between May 5th and 14th surged 345%, with searches from Mexico alone skyrocketing 1,000%. Sounds like the Papal Olympics!

DAILY TOP TRENDS

Live Nation Makes 7-Eleven A Festival Headliner

Live Nation has announced a premium sponsorship slot for its roster of American music festivals — naming rights. First up is 7-Eleven, which has taken top billing at the upcoming pop-punk and alternative rock fest, When We Were Young.

The Main Stage: The pendulum has certainly swung from the all-virtual days of COVID. Brands are now singing, “I want to be where the people are,” like they’re Ariel in The Little Mermaid — companies’ spending on live and experiential events has soared 10% year-over-year, per PQ Media. With only so much premium-fest real estate to go around, the biggest flex on Madison Avenue may soon be a top-tier sponsorship with an audience that best represents their customers.

Between the Sets: Prepare for your Instagram feed to get flooded with videos of Slurpees set to blink-182 hits.

• Rumored to be a seven-figure deal, 7-Eleven’s sponsorship of When We Were Young marks the first time Live Nation has sold the naming rights to a US festival — it’ll now be called When We Were Young Presented by 7-Eleven.

• The company piloted the program internationally in recent years, including the Coca-Cola Flow Fest in Mexico and Rockstar Energy Presents Reading Festival in the UK.

• At When We Were Young, 7-Eleven will have a hangout area where it’ll hand out free Slurpees and have its name up on the main stage (now called the 7-Eleven Stage).

Encore: Russell Wallach, Live Nation’s global president of media and sponsorship, likens the fest naming-right sponsorship to “our equivalent to naming an arena or a stadium [that allow brands to be] truly part of everything we’re doing — every aspect of marketing and promotion and media.”

While this isn’t the first time that brands have sponsored top-tier fests (Vans and Warped Tour are like peanut butter and jelly), scaling the practice could be a massive moneymaker for Live Nation — its adjusted operating income from sponsorships was $764 million in 2024, which was already up 13% from 2023.

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Cheehoo Launches To Make Animation Easier With AI

New AI-powered animation company Cheehoo has brought together a team of top entertainment industry names and Silicon Valley data scientists to revolutionize the minutiae of making 3D-animated projects.

The Big Picture: Making movies is expensive, and making high-quality animated movies is typically very expensive. That usually means that these movies need to make a lot of money to recoup their investment — something even Disney has struggled with in recent years. Finding a way to bring down costs, while also empowering human artists, may seem like an attractive option.

Behind the Scenes: Cheehoo — named after a Pacific Island exclamation of excitement — is making waves right out of the gate.

• Its founding team includes Netflix film chief Dan Lin, former president of DreamWorks Animation Chris DeFaria, former Apple scientists and AI/machine learning experts Dr. Hubert Tsai and Dr. Wei-Cheng Kuo, and Rideback co-CEOs Michael LoFaso and Jonathan Eirich.

• The company, which currently has a production pipeline in beta, has reportedly raised tens of millions of dollars from investors like Greycroft and Point72 Ventures.

• Cheehoo is already being used to work on several projects, which will be announced at a later date.

Final Render: So, what does Cheehoo do? It helps build proprietary LLMs for studios and streamers, so they can use generative AI to optimize workflows — whether that’s creating assets with a “unique artistic style and consistent identity,” streamlining asset compatibility across formats like animation and gaming, or ensuring copyright protection. That’s a lot of nuts and bolts, but it’s the type of stuff that takes a lot of billable hours.

If the platform helps get the same number of animators working on more projects, it could be a tool artists will embrace as much as producers.

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DEEP DIVES

• Read: Bloomberg profiles Paramount co-CEO Chris McCarthy — the executive behind the mega-successful Taylor Sheridan universe, who will probably lose his job when Skydance takes over.

• Listen: Decoder chats with Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya — the now-former FTC commissioners, who were illegally fired by the White House and are now suing to get their jobs back.

• Explore: NYT has an interactive visualizer showing how tariffs on China could radically redesign your home.

61.3% of you voted No in yesterday’s poll: Have you bought a new fragrance within the past year?

“I no longer wear cologne. Too many people have allergies that can be irritated by it.”

“I stocked up at a liquidator’s. The good stuff is too expensive retail.”

“I normally wear Portrait of a Lady but bought Cedrus by Chloé to mix it up in the summers.”

“I have a favorite go-to scent, but I do enjoy changing it up depending on my mood or the weather.”

Let’s keep the conversation going. Join our Poll Of The Day newsletter, so your opinions can shine. Discover how your views line up with your peers’, check out cool insights, and have some fun. It’s data with personality.

QUICK HITS

→ Entertainment / Media

🎸 New inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will include OutKast, The White Stripes, Cyndi Lauper, and Soundgarden.

📺 Netflix is bringing its Tudum Live to the streamer on May 31st — choosing its own livestream capabilities over its previous host, YouTube.

🍿 A Minecraft Movie is officially getting some sanctioned screenings where teens are encouraged to go wild for chicken jockey.

→ Fashion / E-commerce

👟 Nike is facing a class-action lawsuit from the shuttering of its virtual footwear brand, RTFKT.

⚾ Takashi Murakami is collabing with Complex and the MLB on a new capsule collection for the LA Dodgers.

📦 Temu has added some steep “import charges” in response to the trade war between the US and China.

→ Creator Economy

😬 Meta’s celebrity-sounding “digital companions” have been having some very inappropriate conversations with minors.

💰 Elon Musk XAI Holdings — the company that houses xAI and X — is launching a $20 billion funding round.

💻 4chan, arguably the cesspool of the internet, is back online after hackers crippled it for two weeks. But it might not have any money left.