Power, Rights, and Reach
What Amazon, Anthropic, TikTok, YouTube, and the Sphere tell us about control
Not all the news this week is coming out of Amsterdam. While IBC sets the stage for demos and deals, the bigger signals are showing up elsewhere. Amazon is chasing scale at the chip level. Anthropic is paying for shortcuts in data. TikTok is seeing if likes can become transactions. YouTube is stepping into the harsh light of live sports. And Las Vegas is reminding us that even a film from 1939 can find new economics when the venue changes.
Amazon’s Trainium Bet and Anthropic’s Scale-Up
SemiAnalysis reports that Amazon is doubling down on AI infrastructure through its Trainium chips, with Anthropic as both anchor customer and partner. The numbers are eye-popping: multi-gigawatt expansions of compute capacity, the kind of scale usually reserved for national projects. AWS is betting that vertically integrated silicon and a close tie with a frontier model lab can reclaim ground from Nvidia, Microsoft, and Google.
Why it matters: This is infrastructure as foreign policy. Whoever controls efficient training at this level controls the pace and direction of AI development. For media and entertainment, the takeaway is simpler: the ground beneath creative tooling is being built in wholesale chunks of power and chips, not in incremental cloud SKUs. The business models that ride on top will inherit those physics.
Anthropic’s $1.5 Billion Settlement Rejected
Bloomberg reported last week that Anthropic had agreed to pay $1.5 billion to authors and publishers in what would have been the largest copyright payout in U.S. history. Now, Engadget confirms the deal has been rejected by the court. Judge William Alsup called the agreement “nowhere close to complete” and raised concerns about hidden claims and transparency in the process.
Why it matters: What looked like a done deal is now an open wound. The rejection signals that courts are not just rubber-stamping backfill settlements, and that liability for training data could be deeper than even the biggest checks can cover. For investors, the uncertainty compounds. For media companies, it suggests leverage is still on the table. The story is no longer about closure, but about how long these risks will hang over the sector.
TikTok and Fandango Try Ticketing
Variety reports TikTok will partner with Fandango to sell tickets directly in-app, starting with Tron: Ares. The integration appears as a simple “Get Tickets” button in TikTok Spotlight. For Fandango, which has struggled to stay relevant, this is a chance to hitch itself to the discovery engine where audiences already are. For TikTok, it is a low-risk experiment in turning hype into immediate transaction.
Why it matters: This is a commerce rail test. If TikTok can prove conversion from feed to sale, the door opens to concert tickets, events, and beyond. For studios, it shows the leverage of social platforms in bypassing traditional promo channels. The danger for exhibitors is clear: loyalty shifts from theater chains to the app that owns the discovery moment.
https://variety.com/2025/film/news/tiktok-fandango-movie-ticket-purchasing-1236507495/
YouTube’s NFL Stress Test
The New York Times profiles YouTube’s first exclusive NFL game broadcast, Chiefs vs Chargers. It is not just another sports rights deal. It is a live-streaming stress test for a platform built on asynchronous video. With $100 million on the line and the promise of the largest streaming audience yet, even minor glitches could undermine the pitch.
Why it matters: Tech platforms are chasing sports to cement their role as the default living-room channel. But sports is unforgiving. Buffering, audio sync, and latency are not footnotes. They are brand risks at global scale. If YouTube can deliver a seamless NFL broadcast while layering in creator-driven feeds, it proves its infrastructure can compete with traditional networks. If not, leagues will think twice about handing over premium rights.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/technology/youtube-nfl-live-sports.html
The Wizard of Oz at the Sphere, Revisited
Bloomberg followed up on the Las Vegas Sphere’s bet on The Wizard of Oz. The film is now grossing $2 million a day in that venue. What started as novelty is turning into a proof point: a century-old title, reformatted for an immersive dome, is drawing box office returns that rival new releases.
Why it matters: This is cultural economics in plain sight. It shows how infrastructure like the Sphere (and AI from Google in this instance) can reset value for catalog content. It also closes the loop with our earlier coverage, where we framed it as spectacle. The numbers now argue it is more than a stunt. The system is teaching us that context, not novelty, decides what endures.
Through Line
Each story this week shows the system under stress, but also how it adapts. Amazon is scaling chips to a level that feels geopolitical. Anthropic is absorbing the bill for ignoring rights until courts forced the reckoning. TikTok is probing whether hype can be converted into instant purchase. YouTube is testing whether it can deliver the most unforgiving live product on earth without breaking. And the Sphere is rewriting the math on a century-old film simply by changing the experience.
The through line is that infrastructure and culture are not separate. The rails we build in chips, lawsuits, feeds, streams, and domes reshape the value of the media flowing across them. Sometimes they reveal limits. Sometimes they mint new economics. What looks like a spectacle or experiment on the surface is really the system showing us the next potential default.