Summary
➡ Baseball player Shohei Otani has signed a record-setting contract of $700 million. However, a significant portion of this amount, $680 million, will be deferred until 2034-2043, demonstrating effective monetary management.
➡ Google has lost a major antitrust case to Epic Games, which alleged that Google held monopoly power over their App Stores, leading to excessive charges on app sales. This is Epic’s first substantial legal victory in its fight against major tech companies.
➡ In the recent Epic Games vs tech giants showdown, the jury ruled against Google, creating potential for future alterations to app revenue distribution through the Google Play Store. However, any palpable impact on Google is expected to be delayed due to the lengthy appellate process, which can potentially reach the Supreme Court, reminiscent of Epic’s primarily lost battle against Apple.
Transcript
Thanks for being with us tonight. Let’s get straight to that breaking news. The Savannah man known as rapper Kwondo Rondo was arrested overnight by the Federal Bureau of Investigations. 24 year old Taekwon Bowman was taken into custody on federal drug charges, according to an FBI spokesperson. Savannah police was the arresting agency. They say Bowman was pulled over at boroughs and 37th streets around midnight Friday. SPD says. He was the passenger and the only person in the car taken to jail without incident, according to a department spokesperson.
Now, the federal arrest comes nearly six months after Bowman and 18 others were indicted on 49 counts of state drug and gang charges. Bowman was accused of violating the street gang terrorism and Prevention act for playing a role or managing role in the rolling 60s gang. But his so we just going to leave it there because this is quick hits, but let me give you a little bit of context.
So from Georgia, facing new drug charges Friday night in his hometown of Savannah. Now, I don’t know what it’s like to be a drug dealer, okay? Another thing is, I can only imagine what it’s like to be one of the ringleaders, allegedly, according to the different complaints of all of these gang members. I’ve never been into gangs. It’s not really my thing. But more importantly, I can’t imagine being 24 years old named Taekwon Terrell Bowman and being taken into custody on FBI drug charges.
But according to the reports, it says that the Savannah police Department pulled over the car. He was the only one in the vehicle who was arrested. Recent charges come less than a half a year, basically six months. So six months ago, he was just indicted on gang and drug charges and released on $100,000 in bond. Him and 18 others indicted in June. Charged with four counts, including being the manager of an illegal street gang known as the rolling 60s corny.
His other charges include conspiring with others to distribute marijuana and buy pills of the opioid hydrocodone. After a car crash in July, the judge ruled that Bowman could no longer drive and must undergo drug testing if he wanted to stay out of jail. And you know what it is, you know, the same old, same old, same old story. Y’all know that the FBI and the police got their eye on you in your hometown of Savannah.
You supposedly getting money, doing shows, and being a famous rapper. But now we got to continue to look at your mug shot on here. And so, yeah, no new news. Maybe we should just have, like, a segment every week of the latest rapper arrested. Anyways, in addition to that. Oh, man, that’s not the right one. Hold on. Wait. Because I know for a fact I replaced that one.
Let me just make sure that I got it. Two for you. Okay, we’re in the building. Let me make sure I got that one. Two for you. So, in other news, ladies and gentlemen. Bam. So I believe his name, and I’m not sure how to pronounce it correctly, but his name is Shahoye Otani. Shahoye Otani. But Shahoye Otani recently signed a record setting ten year seven. Come on, y’all.
Listen, listen. I need you all to really hear this number. Dial in. Come really close, because I want you to understand and hear this number. This is not nothing to play with. I know that I’ll be showing all of my little receipts, but I’m feeling real small right now. Record setting contract. Shohei is his name. Shohei. $700 million. I just got a chill that just went up my spine.
$700 million is his contract. Let me bring you up to speed of what’s happening in these streets, man. God. In 716 games, a 274 hitter, 171 home runs as a pitcher, an era of three. He’s made 86 starts. We know he will not pitch in 2024. Coming off elbow surgery, he will be a DH. He will be a big time hitter in a lineup that includes Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman.
Guys want to talk about this, though, because he oh so quietly on Saturday, announced on social media he was joining the Dodgers. And then Jack had set the baseball world on fire when the reported numbers came out. Ten years, 700 million. So let me get this straight. He’s a pitcher, he’s a hitter, and he’s a baseball insider because he made sure that he broke his own news as everyone was trying to break that news about him.
So the 700 million number is eye popping because you look at the largest previous numbers for baseball contracts, it would be Mike Trout at about 426. And then the $70 million a year, you’d have Max Scherzer, who makes about 43. But we found out in recent hours because of news that broke, is maybe we shouldn’t be talking about 700 million as being the big number. We should be talking about 2 million or 68 million, because he agreed to defer 68 of the 70 million a year.
I’ve got a former player rep here shaking his head. So let me break this down for you guys, okay? Because this might be one of the smartest contracts I’ve ever seen in my entire life. So $68 million a year, or $680,000,000 of it, is going to be deferred. Okay? I might have had to dedicate an entire segment to this, but I got to break this down. Right? So here’s the thing.
Signed a ten year, 700 million dollar deal and a series of unprecedented deferrals, okay? In an effort to enable the Los Angeles Dodgers to continue spending around stars, which I don’t think that that’s why he did it, he agreed to defer all but $2 million of his salary, of his annual salary, okay? 68 million of his 70 million per year until after the completion of the contract. The deferred money is to be paid out without interest from 2034 to 2043.
Previously unreported deferrals, so on and so forth, okay? So this is how it plays out. This is how it works. He’s only going to take a $2 million salary per year. Now, you also got to take into consideration that he also has other contracts and endorsements where he’s making well over $50 million a year, okay? Well over $50 million as far as what it is that he’s generating from different contracts and shoe deals or whatever they say.
Per the athletic, he’s believed to be making about 50 million annually in non baseball income, on top of his previous endorsement income, and roughly 42 million he made plan for the Angels. And so he’s deferring $680,000,000 of his contract to get that in 2034 through 2043. So he don’t need all of the money. He don’t need all of the money right now. He said, I’m good. And so we going to defer it, and then we going to continue to get the bag that way because I’m already generating over $50 million anyway.
Oh, my God. Oh, my God. This absolutely, positively blew my mind. When I looked at it, I thought that it was a typo, but then I realized that it wasn’t a typo, and it sent the chill down my spine. The way that he’s managing it, it’s not even just the fact that he got a 700 m contract. It’s the fact that he is managing it and he’s negotiating.
It brought a tear to my eye. I’m not a person that likes to count other people’s money, but that just brought a tear to my eyes. So shout out to Shohei. Getting to the bag. I don’t even want to go over to the next story, but we got to get to the next story. Good God almighty. Epic versus Google. Now, Google has lost a battle with Epic. Let me bring you up to speed of what’s going on outside in the tech world.
Welcome back to Squackbox this morning, Google losing a major antitrust battle with Epic Games. The one and only Steve Kovac is here to break down what happened and maybe debate with us. Yeah, we’ll figure this one out. Jury is right. Yeah. Let me set the stage and then we’ll chat it out here. But look, a jury ruled last night Google, it has monopoly power over the App Store.
The verdict comes from a case brought by Epic Games. That’s, of course, the company behind Fortnite. And it caps a three year legal battle between those two companies. Epic Games in 2020 sued both Apple and Google, claiming they held monopoly power over their App Stores, which let them squeeze app companies for up to 30% of their sales. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney cheering the decision, calling it victory over Google on X last night.
It’s the company’s first major legal win in its years long fight against Apple and Google. Now, after this weeks long trial featuring execs like Alphabet CEO Sundar Pachai and Epic Sweeney, it only took the jury a few hours to come back with a unanimous verdict against Google. Now, the judge in the case will decide what the punishment for Google will be at risk. That slice Google takes from money spent within apps distributed through the Google Play Store.
The judge will make that decision after the new year, but it’s going to be a long time before Google feels any pain, if it even happens at all. A Google exec telling us in a statement it will appeal the decision, a process that could take years and could even go all the way to the Supreme Court. And, guys, speaking of the Supreme Court, we’re expected to hear next month whether or not it will take up the case.
Epic mostly lost against Apple. That was back in 2021. Now, remember that this same lawsuit was filed against both Google and Apple. And at the time, it was groundbreaking because the idea of it was, especially during the pandemic where Fortnite absolutely exploded and all of these other games, these battle royale games, these first person shooters and everything like that. Right? And what happened was. There was a lawsuit filed because Epic Games, which is the owner of Fortnite, was basically complaining that, or, I’m sorry, Apple and Google were reigning in Epic Games because Epic was trying to circumvent the payment process to go outside of these places and then have in game purchases, which these specific purchases was being purchased on their platforms, but they weren’t getting their cut.
So Apple owns the App Store and then Google owns its App Store, and then in order for you to be able to do business in their App Store, you have to give them their cut. It’s similar to what happens here on YouTube. We’re leveraging their platform, we’re getting the word out. We’re making it easy and convenient for people to be able to tune in because they already have an ecosystem in which they push out and host a lot of these shows.
Right? And so as a result of it, YouTube gets a cut of the revenue that is generated, especially through ads, from what it is that we do here on the millionaire morning show. And in every other platform that we host here on the platform, same thing goes for Facebook, same thing goes over there for rumble and so on and so forth. Right? But the key was that epic was trying to say that, hey, man, they got a monopoly and we should get more of the money and all of this other type of stuff.
And so it set off these antitrust lawsuits in which they lost mostly against Apple, but for whatever reason, and I’m a deep dive into this a little bit more, for whatever reason they lost, or I’m sorry, they beat Google. But now what happens is nobody is going to get no money. The lawyers are the ones that’s getting paid. There’s going to be a year long, years long appeal process which could then go all the way up to the Supreme Court and then they could be reversed on these decisions and so on and so forth.
So basically, this is just money just being thrown around and you’re never going to really see any real results of it until years later. And this has already been a three year ordeal. So sometimes, especially with these larger companies, when you file a lawsuit, it could cost you more in the long run than you actually get as a result of whatever it is that you’re going to get in the short term.
So they decided that, take this fight on, it’s billions and billions and billions of dollars that’s being spent. But I’ll keep you all up to date and I’ll keep an eye on what’s going on here with this particular issue. And that ladies and gentlemen, is your quick hits. .
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