🌌 Plus: NYE aurora | Tuesday, December 31, 2024
| | | | | | | Axios PM | | By Mike Allen · Dec 31, 2024 | | 🍾 Here's to 2025. Today's newsletter, edited by Alex Fitzpatrick, is 555 words, a 2-min. read. Thanks to Sheryl Miller for copy editing. 🥳 New Year's Eve nesting is popular: An AP-NORC poll of 1,251 adults found 55% of us are ringing in '25 at home ... 16% are celebrating with friends or relatives ... just 5% are going to a bar, restaurant or organized event ... and 23% aren't celebrating at all. Go deeper. | | | | | | 1 big thing: 🏈 New NFL economics | | | | Illustration: Gabriella Turrisi/Axios The NFL's biggest rule change in 2024 was about ownership, not kickoffs, as it allowed private equity into the ranks, Axios Pro Rata author Dan Primack writes. - Why it matters: Football teams have become too valuable for most billionaires to buy solo. Adding private equity could expand the pool of potential buyers — and prompt some owners to sell.
🤑 By the numbers: The average NFL franchise is worth $5.7 billion, according to Forbes. - Fewer than 200 Americans have a net worth of at least that amount. Around a dozen are already NFL owners.
- Now subtract those whose wealth is mostly illiquid or who have no interest in football. The universe of viable owners gets very small, very fast.
💰Enter private equity, which now can own up to 10% of each club. - That's a significant chunk on top of other financing alternatives, such as bank loans and ownership groups.
Go deeper. |     | | | | | | 2. 🌌 New Year's light show | | | | The northern lights flare over a farmhouse in Brunswick, Maine, in May. Photo: Robert F. Bukaty/AP The northern lights may inject additional dazzle for some across the U.S. this New Year's Eve, Axios' Ivana Saric reports. - ✨ The aurora borealis could be visible in Alaska, Washington, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine.
- Parts of Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Iowa and New York may also get a look.
☄️ What's next: The Quadrantids — one of the best annual meteor showers — peak in a few days. Go deeper. | | | | | | | | 3. Catch me up | | | | Joggers on a dark street in San Juan, Puerto Rico, today. Photo: Ricardo Arduengo/AFP via Getty Images - 🪫 An "island-wide" Puerto Rico power outage could last through Thursday in some areas. Nearly 90% of 1.5 million customers were left in the dark. Go deeper.
- 📺 Former CNN anchor Aaron Brown, who died at 76, helped guide viewers through the chaos and horror of 9/11, on his first day at CNN after leaving ABC. He went on air earlier than expected, anchoring from a Manhattan rooftop as the second tower fell. Go deeper.
- 💵 Millions of Americans will start receiving their 2025 Social Security adjustment this week. Benefits increase by 2.5% and about $50 a month — the lowest jump in recent years. Go deeper.
| | | | | | | | 4. ☀️ Carter's solar legacy | | | | Former President Carter had solar panels installed on the West Wing of the White House in 1979. Photo: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Nearly 40 years after President Carter had solar panels put atop the White House, he watched nearly 4,000 get installed in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, in 2017, Axios' Chelsea Brasted writes. - Carter was one of the most environmentally friendly U.S. presidents — though his tenure was marked by a historic energy crisis.
- In a 1977 national address, a sweater-clad Carter urged Americans to drop their thermostats to conserve energy.
🌡️ Yes, but: Carter's big energy plan, which included tax credits for solar panels and a big renewables push, failed in Congress. - The energy crisis is often cited as one reason Carter eventually lost to Ronald Reagan — whose administration removed those White House panels.
Go deeper. | | | | | | 🎩 Thanks for these happy-hour conversations in '24, and have fun tonight! Please invite your friends to join the PM festivities! See you next year. |  | Your essential communications — to staff, clients and other stakeholders — can have the same style. Axios HQ, a powerful platform, will help you do it. | | | |
