Hi! Coachella 2026 has landed back in the California desert with 125,000 daily attendees, the first of two sold-out weekends, and a couple of headliners who really couldn’t have been more different. Today we’re exploring: |
- In the green: Golfer Rory McIlroy just won a second consecutive Masters title.
- Last call: Constellation’s beer sales are drying up after a decade-long climb.
- Still playing: Netflix is launching a gaming app for preschoolers.
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McIlroy is now the Masters’ highest-earning golfer |
After 16 previous attempts, Rory McIlroy finally banished his demons at Augusta National last year to win the Masters and complete his career Grand Slam. Now, he finds himself in even more rarefied air, hanging onto the green jacket for 2026 as he claimed a one-shot victory over current world number one, Scottie Scheffler. Yesterday’s win makes the 36-year-old golfer just the fourth back-to-back Masters winner in history, while taking his major count to six overall. While McIlroy might have reached the stage of his career where he measures success more by legacy than by prize money, it won't hurt that his latest is also his most lucrative major win. By claiming the $4.5 million top prize, up from $4.2 million last year, he has also become the tournament’s highest-earning player ever. |
Figures cited by Golf Digest on the top cash prize at Augusta National dating back to 1934, adjusted for inflation, show that the amount one can earn from winning the tournament has increased significantly, as the Masters’ purse has more than doubled over the last decade. McIlroy’s reward this year is roughly 2.5x what Tiger Woods earned from his 2001 victory — the first winner’s share that crossed the nominal $1 million mark — and about 125x the prize awarded at the first ever Masters in today’s dollars. |
This year’s record $22.5 million purse was shared among the 54 golfers who made the 36-hole cut. But, as many pro sports players already know, the real money often comes from sponsors and brand deals. Even Tiger Woods, who has barely teed up in competition in the last 18 months and dominated headlines leading up to the tournament for all the wrong reasons, took home an eye-watering $45 million in off-course earnings last year, per Forbes. |
Americans aren't drinking as much Mexican beer |
For years, Americans couldn’t get enough of Modelo and Corona, helping turn their US importer Constellation Brands into one of the fastest-growing companies in consumer staples. Now, that streak may finally be drying up. Last week, the beverages giant reported a 10% decline in net sales for the year ended February 2026, driven by a 3% drop in beer sales and a 51% plunge in wine and spirits (though the latter was largely dragged down by the divestiture of lower-end wine labels). The company said that overall demand across beer, wine, and spirits “remained subdued” during much of the year as its core customer base, particularly lower-income households and Hispanic consumers, cut back on spending or traded down to cheaper alternatives amid economic uncertainty. |
When Constellation acquired the full US rights to import and sell Mexican beer brands including Modelo, Corona, and Pacifico in 2013, beer made up roughly half of its sales. Today, that share exceeds 90% of total revenue, with Modelo Especial now the top-selling beer brand by dollar sales in the US. However, the company’s beer sales growth streak reversed for the first time in 12 years in FY26, with shipments falling roughly 4% from the prior year, or just over 15 million cases. The slowdown has been showing up more broadly across beer coming from Mexico, too. With Constellation accounting for a dominant share of Mexican beer imported into the US, the category’s total import value also fell 4.3% in 2025, marking the first annual decline at the border since 2009 following more than two decades of growth. |
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Don’t Let Your AI Strategy Become A Sunk Cost |
The AI revolution isn’t coming… it’s already one desk over from you. Professionals of all levels are using AI to turn hours of drafting, researching and analyzing into tasks that take minutes. But, despite the hype, less than 1% of layoffs in 2025 were attributable to actual productivity gains from AI. The AI fallout isn’t necessarily a career wipeout. What it has become is a career separator — and if you aren’t harnessing this momentum as a leader, you are the bottleneck. The risk is real: 50% of GenAI projects are abandoned because leaders fail to prove ROI, and 49% fail to demonstrate AI value. With 200,000+ client conversations and 1,000+ use case analyses, Gartner helps C-Suite leaders across marketing, HR, finance, and legal move beyond basic uses to high-impact execution. Don’t get left behind: turn AI hype into a bottom-line advantage. |
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Will investing in kids games finally make Netflix Games “the Netflix of games”? |
Gone are the days of wooden blocks and toy soldiers. Now, tech giants are launching apps directly targeted at preschoolers, hoping to convince parents that they’re just the right amount of stimulation for their children. Netflix’s latest gaming app, “Playground,” is exactly that, described by the company as “a world where your kids can step inside their favorite stories and interact with their best-loved characters in entirely new ways.” The new interface is a prime example of Netflix’s updated gaming strategy: create content that supplements its main streaming offering. |
Despite spending at least $2 billion on its gaming business — analysts estimate that Netflix had forked out $1 billion by the fall of 2023, and another billion in 2024 — monthly downloads for apps under the Netflix Games portfolio have largely hovered around 2 million to 4 million over the past three years, according to Appfigures estimates. |
But Netflix Games went under the knife starting in late 2024, with the company shutting down its high-budget game studio “Team Blue,” laying off dozens of employees, and trimming down its typical 30-40 annual game release schedule to only 18 in 2025. Many of the company’s latest releases are simpler games like “Pictionary: Game Night,” which are a long way from the expensive blockbuster games that once dominated the industry. The key shift is how it’s now trying to “match the overall ambition of Netflix” rather than acting as a “distraction.” That makes the ability to drive engagement back to its linear programming a core criteria for success, making experiments like the “watch along” feature for “Squid Game: Unleashed” possible. Building more interactive games could therefore extend the life of its existing shows — and, since they make up some 15% of Netflix’s linear entertainment viewing hours, that could make kids a key gaming audience. |
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- Oil prices surged ~8%
early Monday morning to $104 a barrel after Trump announced the US would blockade the Strait of Hormuz, lifting energy stocks while dragging airline and cruise stocks lower. - Click into place: Meta is expected to overtake Google in digital advertising for the first time this year, with ~$243 billion in projected net ad revenue versus Google’s ~$240 billion, per Emarketer.
- Tesla just won its first approval for Full Self-Driving software in Europe, as the automaker looks to reverse its second consecutive year of declining sales.
- Sandisk will join the Nasdaq 100 on April 20 after the memory-chip maker became the S&P 500’s best-performing stock in the first quarter, rising some 168%.
- Soda, so good… McDonald's is set to offer a Red Bull Dragonberry Energizer later this year, as the world’s biggest burger chain looks to take a bigger gulp of the $100 billion global beverage market.
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In 2025, at least 50% of generative AI projects were abandoned. Based on 200,000+ client conversations and 1,000+ use case analyses, Gartner has the tools C-Level leaders need to navigate everything AI and drive real ROI. |
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- Tracking nearly 100,000 stock trades disclosed by members of Congress since 2016.
- What’s America’s most visited national park? Kyle Frost corralled decades of national parks data into one hub.
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Off the charts: Since 2015, circulation of which US bill has doubled to almost 20 billion notes last year? [Answer below]. |
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