🐤 You're being tracked

🤝 Disney drama: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been embroiled in a years-long dispute with his state’s most iconic tourist destination, but the two sides have reportedly reached a settlement in a central component of their battle. The Walt Disney Company agreed to pausing its ongoing legal dispute over control of a development project affecting Walt Disney World’s special tax district. A judge ruled earlier this year that Florida officials didn’t violate the company’s rights by taking over the district and Disney won’t be litigating any further.

⚾ Orioles ownership: A new deal has recently been approved that will put the Baltimore Orioles in the hands of David Rubenstein. The Major League Baseball franchise had been under the control of the Angelos family for more than three decades, but its billionaire patriarch, Peter, died last week at the age of 94. League bosses held a vote on Wednesday to OK an arrangement giving Rubenstein, who co-founded the influential private equity firm Carlyle Group, along with other investors, a controlling 40% stake in the team.

🍩 Tasty test: What happens when two junk-food favorites join forces? McDonald’s customers will be able to find out soon. The fast-food giant has already conducted market tests of its fledgling partnership with Krispy Kreme at 160 locations in Kentucky and is expected to increase the number of restaurants involved steadily until a selection of donuts are available nationwide. Krispy Kreme will make daily deliveries of original glazed, chocolate iced sprinkles, and chocolate iced kreme-filled donuts for single or six-pack purchases.

☢️ Power play: Nuclear energy has been a somewhat controversial topic, but with the ongoing push to find cleaner sources of power it has once again become a focus of officials across the ideological spectrum. This week, the Biden administration confirmed that it would be providing a $1.5 billion loan to get a nuclear plant in Michigan up and running again. The facility was purchased in 2022 by Holtec International, which planned to dismantle it. But efforts by state and federal entities resulted in a new strategy to restart operations by the end of next year.

By now, most of us have come to terms with the fact that advertisers are keeping tabs on pretty much anything we do online, but many folks might not know that similar tracking systems are in use out in the real world.

One company in particular is on the cutting edge of using physical advertisements to grab the location data of passersby and share that information without ever asking for consent.

Getting to know Soofa

Although it might sound nefarious, the company in question — Soofa — insists that its products are providing a useful service and people shouldn’t be worried about what information its digital kiosks can access and share with advertisers or even government entities.

But as more and more of these kiosks (which typically display ads and relevant information to pedestrians) become more common across the U.S., there’s growing concern about what they actually do.

Soofa’s website boasts that it has “developed the first pedestrian impressions sensor that measures accurate foot traffic in real-time,” noting that its affiliates “can check their analytics dashboard anytime to see how their campaigns are tracking towards impressions goals.”

From the perspective of advertisers, this is clearly beneficial information to have … but should pedestrians be concerned?

What Soofa is collecting

There are a number of data points these kiosks are capable of recording from smartphones as pedestrians pass by, including:

• Manufacturer’s name
• Unique identification code
• Signal strength

This provides Soofa with enough information to determine how many people are walking in certain locations. In addition to sharing this insight with advertisers, the company also reportedly provides reports to local governments.

Despite the potential upside of this strategy, groups like the American Civil Liberties Union have expressed concerns about such information being misused to track people near protests or other sensitive locations.

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🏦 Markets: Wall Street got over the hump on this hump day, with big gains by the three major stock indexes. The S&P 500 hit a new record and the Nasdaq Composite added half a percentage, but it was the Dow Jones Industrial Average that led the day with a 1.2% bump.

The good news is tentative, though, since next week’s market activity will be determined in large part by the results of tomorrow’s personal consumption expenditures price index, a leading gauge of inflation.

As companies far and wide attempt to convince workers to return to the office after an extended pandemic-related hiatus, there are more than a few issues those employees say need to be addressed. One of them involves a dearth of affordable child care, which has presented a hurdle for parents for generations and could once again be a deal-breaker in the current return-to-office era.

Researchers weigh in

A joint study by Boston Consulting Group and the nonprofit group Moms First revealed that the benefits of employer-funded child-care services are often as great or greater than the initial investment.

Since productivity is a key metric for any workplace, providing working parents with reliable and affordable child care options can help ensure that they make it to work and maintain more focus on the job while they’re there.

According to the most recent research, every dollar invested into child care pays between $0.90 and $4.25 in value through:

• Reduced absences
• More on-time arrivals
• Fewer resignations

As the authors of the study concluded: “These benefits pay for themselves.”

Slow, steady growth

More and more employers are beginning to understand the pros associated with offering child care … including UPS, which has introduced an emergency daycare facility onsite in Northern California that has translated to an average of three fewer employee absences per day over the three months the program has been underway.

The package delivery company is exploring plans to roll out a similar strategy at eight other warehouses this year.

At Etsy, more than three-fourths of all employees said they’re more loyal to the company because of its policy to provide up to $4,000 each year for child care.

Nevertheless, only about 12% of U.S. employees (and just 6% of low-income workers) have access to employer-provided child care.

As sports betting becomes more common across the United States, there’s an increased concern about the likely rise in problem gambling. And to their credit, it appears that the biggest names in this emerging sector are forming a coalition to tackle the issue head-on.

Lucky number seven

According to reports, some heavy-hitters in the sportsbook world have promised to spend more than $20 million to fund the formation of the Responsible Online gaming Association. Sure, that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of revenue gaming is bringing in these days, but ROGA Executive Director Jennifer Shatley heralded the move as a big first step in the right direction.

“I’m incredibly excited to move this forward and to do some impactful things and to really expand the knowledge through the research and to create these evidence-based best practices and to really empower players with information,” she said.

The seven entities involved in this undertaking (FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM, Penn Entertainment, Fanatics Betting & Gambling, Hard Rock Digital, and Bet365) make up a whopping 85%+ of the online gaming market.

Exploring ROGA’s mission

So what exactly is it that this new association will do? Essentially, organizers envision ROGA becoming a go-to source for education about the harms of problem gambling and how to participate in gaming responsibly. It will also fund marketing and advertising campaigns to get the message out.

Furthermore, ROGA plans to establish a database to share relevant information between its members as well as a program whereby those members will be held to certain standards for promoting responsible betting.

The initiative is coming amid a continuing spike in sports gambling. Nearly two-thirds of all states along with D.C. currently allow legal gambling and a whopping 15,000 bets were tallied every second during this year’s Super Bowl.