Articles
Inside the Live Entertainment Industry: A Case Study on Ticketmaster
You think getting concert tickets is as simple as clicking “buy”? Think again. Behind the virtual queues, changing prices, and expensive resale tickets sits Ticketmaster, a company that has built a strong position in the live entertainment industry. In this editorial, Yaren Yurdakul explores how Ticketmaster became so dominant, how it makes money from that power, and what could threaten its position in the future.
The Next $500 Billion Industry: How Rolls-Royce Sells Performance
Today, circular economy strategies are changing from the compliance obligations of the past to profit drivers for the biggest companies. New regulations like Quebec's right-to-repair law and the EU's packaging rules push companies toward designing for reuse and recycling rather than disposal. McKinsey estimates circular models could unlock hundreds of billions in value for European consumer goods firms by 2030, largely because Scope 3 emissions dominate corporate footprints. IKEA demonstrates circularity through vertical integration and buy-back programs, while Rolls-Royce achieves it differently, where its "Power by the Hour" model charges airlines for engine performance.
Canada’s Proposed Alberta-B.C. Pipeline: Ambition or Reality?
This conversation about pipelines has long been the centre of Canada’s energy infrastructure. Alberta’s newest proposal, the “one million dollars a day” pipeline, has sparked several discussions about the project’s viability due to the stakeholders involved. Backed by Mark Carney, Alberta is adamant about seeing this proposal become reality. However, British Columbia’s Involvement, Indigenous consultation, and environmental concerns should not be ignored. This article explores various reasons suggested for the pipeline construction, the concerns that remain, and the future of this pipeline’s implementation, raising the question: is this pipeline simply ambition, or reality?
Mineral Wealth in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: A Liability
The DRC has struggled under poor governance, conflict in neighbouring countries, and a weak financial system. As the technology industry only grows stronger in the global economy, demand for the resources necessary for manufacturing has skyrocketed. The DRC has these materials in abundance, but is unable to capitalize on them. As technology has simplified Canadian lives, the conflict in the DRC has escalated. Government reform, along with changes to capital investment, is necessary to put an end to decades long conflict.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: Productivity, Technology, and the Rising Cost of Cinema
Hollywood has a strange economic problem: movies are becoming more expensive even as technology makes filmmaking easier than ever. Bigger cameras, better software, and advanced visual effects have transformed the industry, yet blockbuster budgets continue to climb into the hundreds of millions of dollars. This article explores the economic forces behind this contradiction through Baumol’s Cost Disease, a theory explaining why some labour-intensive industries struggle to achieve the same productivity gains as the rest of the economy. Using Hollywood as a case study, it examines why creativity remains costly and what the film industry reveals about the limits of technological progress.
I Know What You Paid Last Summer: Examining How Wall Street Is Underestimating AI's Latest Trick
Much of 2026 equity research treats AI-driven surveillance pricing as a dependable source of margin growth. That confidence overlooks real weaknesses, including a patchwork of provincial and state laws that can make the technology non-compliant on short notice, a reliance on personal data that consumers are learning to withhold or distort, and a steady loss of the customer trust that long-term valuations depend on. Markets may be treating an uncertain revenue stream as a permanent one, and these earnings deserve far more caution than they are getting.
Turning Hype into Fuel
SpaceX's $2 trillion valuation matters less for what it says about current earnings than for what it lets the company do. This article shows how Musk's narrative and Nasdaq-100 inclusion sustain SpaceX's share price, letting it raise billions by issuing equity. Unlike 2008, the loop funds real projects without debt, but it rests on one man's credibility, and a reversal could hit ordinary investors' retirement savings.
The Price of Waiting: Understanding the Illiquidity Premium
The article explains the illiquidity premium, the compensation investors receive for accepting that private market investments cannot be easily sold. It traces the concept through academic finance research, its mechanics across private equity, credit, infrastructure and the regulatory shifts after 2008 that let private markets scale to $24 trillion USD. The piece examines who bears this risk, noting that pension funds and insurers, not individuals, hold much of the exposure. It includes a current example of private credit in AI infrastructure to illustrate the premium in practice. It also discusses tools managers use to ease the lack of liquidity.
The Beautiful Game, the Ugly Politics
In “The Beautiful Game, the Ugly Politics”, Madison Miller traces how the 2026 World Cup, co-hosted by Canada, the US, and Mexico, became as much a political story as a sporting one. Madison charts Trump’s recurring interference, from lobbying for the joint bid and pressuring FIFA to overturn a player’s suspension, to inserting himself into the trophy ceremony, then widens the lens to ICE’s presence at American stadiums. Madison later expands on the other costs, including Canada’s ballooning hosting costs, a surge of online racism, and FIFA’s long-unfulfilled promises of reform. Throughout, Madison presses a single question: who really pays the price for these political spectacles?
The Right’s Legislative Playbook for Winning Before the Vote
In this article, Mehta Hussain argues that the American right's legislative dominance stems from superior infrastructure rather than superior popularity. Examining three venues of institutional power: the federal reconciliation process, the Federalist Society's judicial pipeline, and ALEC's state-level model-bill network, the article demonstrates how conservative actors have spent decades converting political ambition into binding law. Contrasting this with the left's reliance on moral conviction and its underfunded counterpart, SiX, the article argues that closing this architectural gap requires matching the right in institutional discipline.