Watching the world watch Texas.
Issue No. 6, 2024
In this issue of Branding Texas: New world-class F1 Circuit of the Americas racetrack smoothed the way for this year’s October grand prix race in Austin; fresh and fabulous Texas jobs numbers gives thoughts of world, well maybe national, domination to our cheery governor; Texas may be planning to add additional incentives to lure film and TV production to the Lone Star State; and the planned new Texas Stock Exchange may have higher investment standards than the NYSE; and ESPN’s College GameDay scores record-breaking viewership during its latest Austin visit for the Texas-Georgia showdown.
Thomas Graham
Austin’s Formula One track “borrows from the greats”
Madeline Coleman is a globe-trotting New York Times staff writer for the once “gray lady” newspaper’s now jazzy NYT sports coverage, which is now branded The Athletic. Madeline covers Formula One and was in Austin for the latest run of the United States Grand Prix on October 20. “It was a Ferrari one-two in the Lone Star State on Sunday,” she wrote, “as Charles Leclerc won… and Carlos Sainz finished second.”
A few days before the race, Coleman spoke with enthusiasm about the re-do of the track, the aging Circuit of the Americas, “a once-bumpy track with low speed corners” … but now “the country’s only purpose-built Formula 1 track.”
Added Coleman: “COTA’s design draws inspiration from the greats, like Silverstone’s Maggots and Becketts, but it is unique in its own right. A massive American flag sits atop Turn 1 (because, as the saying goes, everything is bigger in Texas), and the country’s iconic stars and stripes are sprinkled throughout the track design.”
Bobby Epstein, one of the masterminds and financiers of Austin’s F1 project, told reporters at the race weekend that the circuit was forced to spend over $10 million to resurface the track for the 2024 edition. “We’re doing everything we can to keep Austin on the Formula 1 calendar, he said, “and our immediate future is assured.”
Motorsport, which covered the Austin event intensively, also included the appearance of our friends the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. The Cheerleaders will cover their presence at the race in the new season of their award-winning Netflix series.
Texas fires up America’s jobs engine
The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas now forecasts that jobs in Texas will increase by 2.5 percent by year’s end, suggesting a grand total of 348,000 jobs will have been added and statewide employment in December of this year will reach 14.4 million.
It was enough to convince Governor Greg Abbott to set off rockets of his own when he saw confirming numbers on October 22 from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Added Abbott: “With the Best Business Climate in the nation and a highly skilled, diverse, and growing workforce, businesses and entrepreneurs find the freedom to innovate and grow in Texas.”
The Governor read the good data coming out from USBLS about the Lone Star State and quickly proclaimed: “Texas continues to dominate as America’s jobs engine. America’s leading businesses are fleeing the stranglehold of over-regulation in other states for the competitive business advantages found only in Texas.”
The caps on “Best Business Climate” are the guv’s own cheerleader style. Think he might be rebranding the state?
Can Texas eat more of Hollywood’s lunch?
One of the sidesteps that the movie industry took after signing very generous craft contracts with the actors and directors unions on the West Coast is to slyly move even more production away from heavily-regulated California to other right-to-work American states where union agreements are often ignored or unenforced.
Adding to Tinsel-Town anxiety, Associated Press has now picked up and widely distributed a Texas Tribune story by TT reporter Pooja Salhotra from early October suggesting that Texas lawmakers will soon consider expanding the state’s howdy to film and television producers. Texas is already generous with film incentives and made claims to have delivered a whopping “469% return on investment” – expanding the Lone Star’s employment base and generating billions in spending.
I wonder if the delicious craft lunches that are offered to staff on film sets are any different here in Texas? Maybe more Southwest tacos and countrified barbeque ribs?
I’d like me some tacos bistec estilo matamoros from Austin’s Con Todo if you want me to star in your next horse opera – but better feed me after the shoot or it will show up on camera – spilled all over my pastel pearl-snap embroidered finest from Triple Z Threadz on South Congress Avenue.
Will Texas Stock Exchange rules be tougher than the NYSE?
My favorite daily read, the Financial Times, covered the proposed rules of our planned new Texas Stock Exchange in an early October dispatch.
According to the FT’s Myles McCormick, reporting from Austin with reporter Jennifer Hughes weighing in from New York: “[T]he new exchange’s standards, including earnings tests, minimum prices and other unspecified measures, would be stringent enough to in effect exclude more than a third of the companies listed on Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange.”
Jim Lee, CEO of the new TXSE said the exchange would be “as apolitical an exchange as could ever be put together” and described ESG as a “short-term aberration that other exchanges are pushing their issuers away under”.
Lee and his board believe the new exchange could appeal to roughly 1,000 publicly traded companies — about a fifth of the national total — and a pipeline of 14,000 private equity-backed private companies that are based in the so-called south-east quadrant of the US, an area stretching from Texas to North Carolina.”
Jim Lee is a smart choice to lead the exchange and a good investment all by himself: He started his career in mergers and acquisitions at First Boston and Lehman Brothers. Jim has held several leadership roles in the public sector, including as chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Teacher Retirement System of Texas. He holds an MBA and a BBA from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business and graduated from the London Business School’s finance/hedge funds programs.
College Gameday put UT against Georgia at Memorial Stadium in Austin
The milestones keep coming for ESPN’s popular College GameDay. The broadcast visited Texas, again, and this time it was an October 19th matchup with the University of Texas against Georgia on the UT campus.
Texas tears were shed when No. 5 Georgia knocked off our No. 1 Texas 30-15.
The game delivered College GameDay’s best Week 8 episode ever after averaging 2.3 million viewers during its stop in Austin for the Georgia vs Texas game. The game’s final hour peaked at 3.8 million viewers, and College GameDay remains on pace for its best year ever.
But stay hopeful and stay ready as the Longhorns will visit their forever instate rivals, Texas A&M Aggies on Saturday, November 30 at Kyle Field in College Station.
It is sure to be a highlight of the season.
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