Musk announces and awards $1 million lottery prize
During an America PAC rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Musk announces that the PAC will award daily $1 million lottery prizes to a registered voter in key swing states until the US presidential election on 5 November. The winner will be chosen at random from those who sign the PAC’s pro-US Constitution petition.
I have a surprise for you, which is that we are going to be awarding a million dollars to randomly to people who have signed the petition… every day from now until the election.
He then awards the first $1 million prize to audience member John Dreher, a registered Republican in Pennsylvania, who has already voted by email. Dreher is presented with an oversized check on stage. Dreher:
Thanks Elon, This is great. I’m really ecstatic. I want to congratulate you on your rocket catch last week. I’ve been following you for ten years. Got your biography ten years ago and been watching you ever since. I’m a big fan.
Wins Olympic Gold
Khelif wins the Olympic gold medal in the women’s boxing 66-kilogram (145-pound) beating Liu in a unanimous decision. All five judges had it 10-9 for Khelif in each round. After the win, a man in her corner hoisted the fighter onto his shoulders and took Khelif on a victory lap as the boxer held an Algerian flag over their head.
I’m very happy, God made that (happen), that’s my dream! This fight for a win. Amazing. I prepared eight years in USA, in Europe, all over the world for this victory. Olympic championship! Thank you so much!
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Musk no longer world’s richest person
Musk loses the top spot on Forbes’ 2023 billionaires list to Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH, of France. Arnault gained $53 billion, the biggest gain of any billionaire in 2022, taking his fortune $211 billion, $31 billion more than Musk, according to Forbes’ calculations.
SBJ Power Player
Yaccarino is named a Sports Business Journal Power Player:
Yaccarino makes the entire Olympic broadcast machine run. Behind Mike Tirico, the thousands of NBC Olympics producers and thousands of hours of sports action, sits the advertising revenue and Yaccarino’s team. For eight years, she’s led the sales effort, keeping the Olympics profitable for NBC despite the rapidly changing nature of consumption. Before the postponement, her team had booked a record $1.25 billion for the Tokyo Games.
NewsBlocks reaches Great British Entrepreneur Contest finals
NewsBlocks is a finalist in the Great British Entrepreneur Challenge. The contest, run by Andy Yates and promoted by The Daily Mail, offers £50,000 investment and mentoring as a prize, and aims to find:
great start-ups and early-stage firms and to find passionate entrepreneurs who want to disrupt and change their market for the better, and change their lives at the same time.
Mark meets with Andy, who is a former journalist, in London to talk about NewsBlocks. Mark:
In the end we didn’t win, but it was great to meet with Andy, and hear his enthusiasm for helping innovative project. We look forward to keeping him updated as we build NewsBlocks in the future.
Immortalised in wax at Madame Tussauds in New York
A wax statue of McGregor is revealed at Madame Tussauds’s in New York. His statue is the latest addition to the athletes’ wing, alongside the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Muhammad Ali, with the area transformed into a theme of mixed martial arts and boxing for its arrival. McGregor is only the second UFC fighter after Chuck Liddell to have his likeness on display at the museum.
Sell out Manchester Apollo
The band announces it has sold out all 3500 seats of Manchester’s Apollo theatre.
15th Sept 2016 – we announced we’d sold out @O2RitzManc
15th Sept 2017 – we announced we’d sold out @Alberthallmcr
15th Sept 2018 – We’ve just sold out @O2ApolloManc !We can’t explain how much this means to us, but I’m sure you’ll find out first hand on the night ❤️🙌 pic.twitter.com/wS6I2HtrM0
— THE SLOW READERS CLUB (@slowreadersclub) September 15, 2018
‘McGregor’ and ‘Notorious’: top new cat names in Dublin
McGregor inspires the top two places on the newcomers list of cat names in Dublin in 2018, according to a Just Cats survey of over 70,000 pet owners from the greater Dublin area. ‘McGregor’ and ‘Notorious’ are number one and two on the newcomers list. Overall, ‘Molly’ is the most popular cat name, followed by ‘Charlie’ and then ‘Max’. Other top names on the newcomers list include ‘Trump’, ‘Khaleesi’, ‘Jon Snow’, ‘Harry’ and ‘Meghan’. RVN Veterinary Nurse, Roisin Foran says:
Our annual survey is conducted across 13 veterinary clinics in Dublin and Meath over a 12 month period…The old reliable names such as Kitty, Tiger and Daisy continue to pop up year after year, but it’s the zany, pop-culture and news-driven names that really grab our attention when they enter our clinic.
Manchester Music Cup semi-finalists
The band reaches the semi-finals of the Manchester Music Cup, a knockout voting contest, hosted by XS Manchester. After beating Joy Division and The Charlatans, the band is knocked out by James, who are beaten by Oasis in the final.
No.4 on Forbes Highest Paid Athletes list
Forbes magazine ranks McGregor as the 4th highest earning athlete in the world for 2018. McGregor earned $99 million, primarily from the $85 million he earned by boxing Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2017. Mayweather tops the list with $285 million, with Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo second and third.
Made it to number 4 on the Forbes list this year. If I had fought on the agreed May 12th bout in Rio de Janeiro, I would have surpassed Ronaldo and [Lionel] Messi to take [second] place…Something came up however….Ah well, still under 30.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BjsOVWiAJyj/
Honoured at Best of Ireland Gala
McGregor is honoured at the 7th annual Best Of Ireland Gala in New York City for his continuing charitable work with children’s hospitals in Ireland. McGregor attended the event with his partner Dee Devlin as well as his MMA coach John Kavanagh and his girlfriend Orlagh Hunter. The event is held every year into raise funds for the Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital Crumlin in Dublin and Children’s Medical Research Foundation (CMRF).
I look forward to hearing and seeing reports of where the money is put to use in the hospital. What a great night!
https://www.instagram.com/p/BepQ5AYg9DV/
The CityLife Awards: Best Breakthrough Act
The band win the Best Breakthrough Act award at the 2018 City Life Awards, hosted at the The Deaf Institute, Manchester. Over 14,000 votes were collected. The band play a short acoustic set at the venue.
Just won Best Breakthrough Act at @CityLifeManc Awards. Massive thanks to all the fans that voted for us ❤️ 🎉🍻 pic.twitter.com/e6lPqkZp4t
— THE SLOW READERS CLUB (@slowreadersclub) January 29, 2018
McGregor enters Ireland’s Rich List at 111
McGregor, estimated to be worth €140 million, enters Ireland’s Rich List at 111 and is the second highest new entrant. He was beat by a young tech entrepreneur, Tommy Kelly, who operates eShopworld, which makes cross border shopping easier. Kelly is estimated to be worth around €150 million.
McGregor vs Branson face off
McGregor receives a lifetime achievement award at the Pendulum Summit in Dublin, from the annual business summit group that attracts rich corporate leaders from across Europe. When McGregor goes to the stage to be given the award by Branson, they both take off their shirts and face off. McGregor:
He is not a knighted Sir on this soil.
https://youtu.be/5bfoJ5AcGmQ
McGregor is ranked top “Sports Figure” by Fansided
McGregor comes fifth overall and tops the list for the “Sports Figure” category in Fansided’s annual Fandom 250 ranking. In 2016, McGregor was ranked at number 147 on the list. The only sports celebrity higher in the ranking is Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Fansided says one of the biggest factors for the ranking was how McGregor dominated headlines in the media worldwide with his fight against Floyd Mayweather.
The numbers support this. Mayweather vs. McGregor is a top-two most watched pay-per-views in combat sports history and was already the biggest draw in UFC history entering the year. McGregor’s newborn son gained tens of thousands of Instagram followers the day he was born. In a 12-month stretch leading into the fight against Mayweather, McGregor added 13 million followers on social media and his posts generated 419 million interactions.
McGregor-Mayweather breaks the all-time PPV record
Dana White says that last weekend’s super-fight has generated a record-breaking 6.5 million pay-per-view buys, a figure which would dwarf the previous record of 4.6 million, set by Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, by almost 2 million. This is despite the three million people who illegally streamed the fight. The final figure could be higher, as it doesn’t include sales outside the United States. It will also mean that McGregor holds the pay-per-view record for both boxing and mixed martial arts. The 6.5 million figure also beats the cumulative total for the top five UFC pay-per-views in the company’s history, and is five times larger than any WWE PPV event ever. The fight will go down in history as one of the single most profitable sports events ever.
Wow. In this Instagram story post by Urijah Faber, Dana White says #MayweatherMcGregor did 6.5M PPV buys. pic.twitter.com/JBJGNUDy7q
— Chamatkar Sandhu (@SandhuMMA) August 30, 2017
Three million people illegally streamed McGregor-Mayweather fight
Almost 3 million people watched Saturday’s McGregor-Mayweather fight using illegal streams, according to web security company, Irdeto. Viewers used online links to get around paying the $99.95 charged in the US for the high-definition pay-per-view (£19.95 in the UK). 239 illegal streams of the fight were watched by 2,930,598 people. Had they all paid, even at a lower rate, the illegal audiences would have brought in at least $60 million more.
McGregor nominated for 2017 ESPY award
McGregor is nominated for “Best International Athlete” and “Best Fighter” at the 2017 ESPY awards. Opposing him in the votes for Best International Athlete (see online votes here) are Canelo Alvarez (boxing), Usain Bolt (track and field), Katinka Hosszu (swimming), and Cristiano Ronaldo (soccer). In the Best Fighter category McGregor is up against UFC champion Demetrious Johnson — ranked one slot above McGregor in the pound-for-pound list — as well as boxing’s Terence Crawford, Gennady Golovkin, and Andre Ward.
McGregor breaks into top 25 on Forbes highest paid athletes
According to Forbes, McGregor is the 24th placed highest paid athlete in the world. He earned $34 million over the past year, which including his pair of fights against Nate Diaz as well as his lightweight championship win over Eddie Alvarez. McGregor earned $27 million from his fight purses with another $7 million earned in endorsements and sponsorships. Since Floyd Mayweather’s retired in 2015, McGregor is the highest paid combat sports athlete, and is the only mixed martial artist to make the top 100 list. The highest ranked boxer is Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, who earned a reported $28.5 million. McGregor is ahead of NBA superstars Carmelo Anthony ($32.6 million), Kyrie Irving ($29.9 million) and NFL wide receiver Antonio Brown ($31.9 million). The UFC lightweight champion was the first ever mixed martial arts to crack the top 100 last year when he came in at No. 85 with $18 million in reported earnings.
Horan beats McGregor to become Ireland’s most followed person on Twitter
Horan (@NiallOfficial) becomes Ireland’s most followed person on Twitter, after hitting the 30 million mark. The former One Direction star has almost eight times as many followers as his nearest rivals – Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) and WWE star Sheamus (@WWESheamus), who each have 4.1 million fans. Horan’s fans could fill Croke Park 408 times. Rory McIlroy (@McIlroyRory) comes fourth with 3.1 million followers.