extraction economy Archives - Wakeman Consulting Group

Real Attendance: The Only Attendance Number That Doesn’t Lie

August 20, 2026
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A recent UCLA football game announced an attendance of 27,143. The turnstile scan was 12,383. That’s a huge gap. A peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Applied Sport Management looked at 48 Division I men’s basketball programs over three seasons. Almost a thousand games. The average no-show rate was 37 percent. In my experience, that’s […]

August 14, 2026
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The miracle promised by direct-to-consumer is dead. D-E-D. Dead. A 2026 research report looked at 50 prominent DTC brand failures between 2022 and 2026. Celebrated brands like SmileDirectClub and Allbirds were included. SmileDirectClub went from a $4.1 billion valuation to a $39 million sale in 53 months. 99% down. Allbirds, once worth billions, and on the feet of so […]

August 11, 2026
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The secondary market has been in the news a lot lately…a lot. The D.C. RESALE ACT just passed. StubHub is facing a lawsuit over illegal practices. The Savannah Bananas kept resale in-house. They saved their fans $13.69M. No fraud. No black-market boogie man. Just real relationships with fans…sustained and deepened. StubHub’s CEO is under investigation […]

What I Believe: A Business Statement

What I Believe Record profits. Mass layoffs. The President of the United States is mocking people who can’t afford groceries. A generation of young people who’ve done everything they were told to do: worked hard, studied, chased the right credentials. They feel like they’ll never own a home, have a stable career, pay off their […]

Never Have a Chance: The USMNT Will Never Challenge for a World Cup While the Development System is Built on Extraction

The US Men’s National Team lost 1-4 to Belgium on Monday night. The World Cup round of 16. The most anticipated men’s soccer match in the United States in decades…maybe ever. Afterwards, Americans were asking: “Why aren’t we more competitive at the top of global soccer?” Two voices have dominated this debate: Alexi Lalas and […]

The Three Stages of Extraction: How We Built a “Buyer Beware” Economy

The Wall Street Journal reports that Polymarket staged fake wins on copycat websites. Creators filmed themselves celebrating fabricated payouts…$100,00 here, a lucky break there. Just a day in the life of a winner. The real market: running on a public blockchain, showed those same bets would have lost. Across 1,105 videos, roughly $1.9M in bets were shown. […]

The World Cup: A Global Game of Chicken

The World Cup is two weeks away. Thursday brought a few interesting stories: This is what a game of chicken looks like. A structural standoff where the people with tickets thought they’d be able to get football fans to pay anything to see “the biggest World Cup ever.” All they had to do was wait. […]

extraction economy

Real Attendance: The Only Attendance Number That Doesn’t Lie

The DTC Graveyard: Why Businesses Threw Away Billions on a Bad Bet

$414 Million Saved Is Only Half the Story: Why the Free Market Era in Tickets Is Ending

What I Believe: A Business Statement

Never Have a Chance: The USMNT Will Never Challenge for a World Cup While the Development System is Built on Extraction

The Three Stages of Extraction: How We Built a “Buyer Beware” Economy

The World Cup: A Global Game of Chicken

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