Forbes Daily Briefing

As the final minutes ticked away in a disappointing 4-1 loss to Belgium on July 6 that knocked the U.S. men’s national team out of the World Cup, Fox play-by-play announcer John Strong made a direct plea to his television audience of 30 million Americans.

“If you’ve enjoyed what you’re seeing, well, support your local team,” Strong said from Seattle’s Lumen Field, packed with a sellout crowd of 66,925—more than double the average attendance of 31,000 across the Seattle Sounders’ first six Major League Soccer games this season at the same stadium. “This doesn’t have to be the last soccer you watch for the last four years. It’s a beautiful sport.”

Often an afterthought both among top-tier global soccer leagues and in the U.S. professional sports scene, MLS has long viewed this summer’s World Cup on U.S. soil as an inflection point for a new phase of growth, with help from Lionel Messi, the biggest star in the league’s history. On Sunday, the 39-year-old superstar will lead Argentina into the World Cup final against Spain while seeking to lock up the Golden Boot as the tournament’s top scorer. On Wednesday, Messi’s Inter Miami will restart its season after MLS’s seven-week World Cup break.

By Hank Tucker,

Forbes Staff
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With the FDA panel that’s considering whether to recommend legal production of seven peptides meeting on Thursday and Friday, Shaun Noorian had planned to be at its Maryland campus in person. Ahead of the panel, Noorian, the founder and CEO of Houston-based Empower Pharmacy, one of the nation’s largest compounding pharmacies, told Forbes, “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. The who’s who of the peptide space will be there.” Hundreds of others had been expected to jam into the room as well, including compounders, telehealth founders and longevity influencers.

While these peptides are currently not legal to produce for anything other than “research purposes,” that hasn’t stopped a booming gray market from exploiting that loophole. There’s little scientific data on their safety and efficacy, and the many sketchy sellers who distribute them operate with no oversight. Still, the illicit peptide market could be worth an estimated $3 billion. Silicon Valley bros, longevity medics and MAHA believers take them, while wellness influencers promote their “peptide stacks” online to speed recovery or improve sleep. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a self-described “big fan of peptides,” as he told podcaster Joe Rogan in February.

By Amy Feldman
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the final minutes ticked away in a disappointing 4-1 loss to Belgium on July 6 that knocked the U.S. men’s national team out of the World Cup, Fox play-by-play announcer John Strong made a direct plea to his television audience of 30 million Americans.

“If you’ve enjoyed what you’re seeing, well, support your local team,” Strong said from Seattle’s Lumen Field, packed with a sellout crowd of 66,925—more than double the average attendance of 31,000 across the Seattle Sounders’ first six Major League Soccer games this season at the same stadium. “This doesn’t have to be the last soccer you watch for the last four years. It’s a beautiful sport.”

Often an afterthought both among top-tier global soccer leagues and in the U.S. professional sports scene, MLS has long viewed this summer’s World Cup on U.S. soil as an inflection point for a new phase of growth, with help from Lionel Messi, the biggest star in the league’s history. On Sunday, the 39-year-old superstar will lead Argentina into the World Cup final against Spain while seeking to lock up the Golden Boot as the tournament’s top scorer. On Wednesday, Messi’s Inter Miami will restart its season after MLS’s seven-week World Cup break.

By Hank Tucker,

Forbes Staff
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the past decade, Greg Flynn has been America’s largest franchisee, and now he is the largest in the world. But he has a voracious appetite for more.

“The dream here is to create a global business with operating capabilities and success beyond what the world has seen,” says Flynn, the 62-year-old CEO and founder of Flynn Group and Flynn Properties. “Operating businesses, especially consumer-facing ones, are really hard. If you can do it well consistently, over multiple brands and multiple geographies and multiple industries, that is a valuable and defensible thing to do.”

Over the past three decades, he has doubled down on fast food franchises again and again. With $5 billion in annual revenue from more than 3,000 franchises of Applebee’s, Taco Bell, Panera, Arby's, Pizza Hut, Wendy’s and now Planet Fitness in 44 states as well as Australia and New Zealand, Flynn’s portfolio is more than double the size of the next biggest franchisee.

Forbes estimates Flynn has about 25% ownership with some $2.5 billion in loans and over $100 million in cash on hand. At a valuation Forbes estimates of $5 billion, that means Flynn is worth an estimated $650 million. (Flynn declined to comment.)

By Chloe Sorvino,

Forbes Staff
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the last two years, Will Freeman has been advocating against Flock Safety, an $8.3 billion surveillance company that tracks vehicles with a network of over 80,000 cameras. His organization, DeFlock, crowdsourced a map that shows where the company’s cameras are located, and helps local grassroots movements organize against Flock deployments.

In an interview with Forbes last year, Flock CEO Garrett Langley described DeFlock as a “terroristic organization.” But now, as Flock faces an increasingly vitriolic public backlash, Langley says he regrets that label.

“My comments were a mistake and I apologize,” he says. “There are groups today that have real valid criticisms of the business, and I think what's changed for us is, as we've listened to them and heard them out, what we're trying to do is find this balance. We believe in a world where we can have safety and privacy.”

By Thomas Brewster,

Forbes Staff
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices