Good morning,

Welcome back to The Backstory, your weekend review of the best of Puck.

It was another remarkable week. Matt Belloni reported on the fallout in the House of Wasserman; Kim Masters assessed Bob Iger’s legacy in real time; Julia Alexander reconsidered the NFL’s plan for world domination; Eriq Gardner analyzed Matthew McConaughey’s legal maneuver to fend off A.I.; Dylan Byers gathered the latest tales of woe from the Washington Post dungeons of solitude; Bill Cohan got to the bottom of Goldman Sachs’ Kathy Ruemmler scandalette; Ian Krietzberg investigated the A.I. industry’s data center gold rush; John Ourand scrutinized the NBA’s evolving tankonomics; and Marion Maneker pored over Leon Black’s $2.6 billion art book. Meanwhile, Lauren Sherman graded Luca de Meo’s first 100 days atop Kering; Rachel Strugatz chronicled the latest Glossier belt-tightening; and Sarah Shapiro parsed Tuckernuck’s MAGA headache.

Down in D.C., Julia Ioffe sent a dispatch from Munich on the collapse of NATO; Leigh Ann Caldwell explained the D.H.S. funding brawl on the Hill; Peter Hamby waded through the ’26 races in Gavin-land; and Abby Livingston predicted a firestorm in Michigan.

Check out these stories, and others, via the links below. And stick around for the backstory on how it all came together.

Lauren Sherman outlines the GQ succession race and makes sense of the Luca de Meo turnaround at Kering.
and…
Rachel Strugatz breaks the news on the latest bloodletting at Glossier.
meanwhile…
Sarah Shapiro acknowledges that Republicans buy Tuckernuck dresses, too.

Marion Maneker sorts through the Epstein files to piece together Leon Black’s art portfolio.

Matt Belloni details Casey Wasserman’s Epstein-adjacent challenges and Ted Cruz’s Paramount studio tour.
and…
Kim Masters reassesses Bob Iger’s legacy as he hangs up the Mouse Ears for good.
meanwhile…
Eriq Gardner ponders Matthew McConaughey’s novel plan to protect himself from A.I. doppelgangers.

Ian Krietzberg does the math on the A.I. data center land grab.

Stuart Heritage rifles through the Peggy Siegal files.
and…
James Wolcott puts Melania into historical perspective.

Dylan Byers reveals why Bezos finally gave Will Lewis the boot.

John Ourand surveys the media executive class about the NBA’s tanking problems.
and…
Julia Alexander spots a few road bumps en route to NFL world domination.

Bill Cohan runs Goldman’s Kathy Ruemmler risk analysis before her departure.

Leigh Ann Caldwell unpacks Capitol Hill’s ICE hunger games.
and…
Julia Ioffe offers a NATO gut check from Munich.
and…
Abby Livingston and Peter Hamby diagnose a series of blue state headaches.

Dylan goes deep on “Legendary February” with NBC Sports czar Rick Cordella on The Grill Room.
and…
Ourand and Pro Football Talk’s Mike “F’n” Florio suss out the NFL undercurrents on The Varsity.
and…
Lauren and outgoing Oscar de la Renta designers Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia remember the good ol’ days on Fashion People.
and…
John Heilemann and sportswriter Sally Jenkins sing a dirge for WaPo on Impolitic.
and…
Matt and Survivor producer Jeff Probst discuss the inner workings of reality TV on The Town.
and…
Peter and Ourand get into the NBA’s glow-up on The Powers That Be.

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On Sunday evening, my wife, Rebecca, and I arrived at the modernist Whitby Hotel on West 56th Street shortly before 6 p.m., and glided through the lobby en route to the event and screening space downstairs. It was another perfectly sub-frigid evening in Manhattan—the umpteenth consecutive day in which New York seemed to be colder than Antarctica (and occasionally and remarkably accomplished that Shackleton-esque feat). As we descended the stairs, however, we were transported into an utterly glowing and chic alternative reality. Models swanned in couture. Swells congregated beside an elegant bar. A Petrossian-inspired caviar station was being prepared with blinis, champagne, and Belvedere. Not bad for February.

All Photos: Courtesy of Oscar de la Renta

I was there to co-host Puck’s first-ever Super Bowl soirée, in partnership with Oscar de la Renta, the historic yet very à la mode fashion brand founded by its namesake just more than 60 years ago. I’ve long adored the brand and the business for both personal and professional reasons. Editing a profile of the designer was one of my first big-league assignments at Vanity Fair some two decades ago. Similarly, I’ve admired how the family has both maintained control of the business and nourished its remarkable success into a new era.

Oscar has been shepherded for years by a notably visionary C.E.O., Alex Bolen, who also happens to be the late designer’s son-in-law. Under Bolen’s leadership, the brand has articulated a new vision for luxury in the digital age—in particular, Bolen moved away from the traditional runway formula and pivoted toward a more curated and community-based strategy, one that has brought the business closer than ever to its most influential, devoted customers. In a way, this vision aligned with how we have attempted to steer Puck. As my peerless partner Lauren Sherman noted last year, “Bolen didn’t just say goodbye to big, expensive runway to-dos; he also declined to share lookbooks with members of the press, or permit any reviews of collections. The last collection with images available on Vogue.com is Resort 2023, reviewed in June 2022.”

As we walked in, I immediately saw Bolen and stopped to trade notes—ski reports, family updates, even laments about our shared heritage as Jets fans. (This was a Super Bowl party, after all.) By that point, however, the deluge had begun. We were soon surrounded by some of my newest partners—Julia Vitale, the brilliant editor of Air Mail; Linda Wells, the legendary author of Air Mail Look; the gifted writer and editor Elena Clavarino—plus my ride-or-dies: Bill Cohan (along with his lovely and effervescent wife, the publishing eminence Deb Futter); Marion Maneker; Lauren, herself; and P.R. mogul Risa Heller, once famously described as a yenta Whitey Bulger from the Upper Midwest.

Elsewhere, there was the great Oscar C.M.O. Chloe Popescu, beloved Hermès executive Peter Malachi, Sotheby’s C.E.O. Charles Stewart, OTB’s Julia Erdman, the Zagats (!!), the inimitable fashion journalist Teri Agins, podcaster and Zelig Chris Black, Jil Sander creative director Simone Bellotti, Calvin Klein’s Alix Rutsey, and Christie’s C.M.O. Gillian Gorman Round. Plus, some of the best Puck operators and executives: Liz Gough, Alex Bigler, Eric Van Gelder, and Gaby Grossman.

As I was drinking Bud Light out of a co-branded Solo cup, watching a pal spread a little caviar on his soft serve, I noticed an old friend walk by: Nate Silver, the generational election prophet and media visionary. Nate and I have known each other for ages, dating back to when I was his editor at the Times. I recalled how we’d worked together more than a dozen years prior on a piece called Nate Silver Picks the Super Bowl, in which I’d dragooned him—over his better judgment and the ruthless Times standards Praetorian Guard—to make a prediction in the Gray Lady about the winner of Super Bowl XLVII between the Ravens and 49ers. Midway through that game, the Niners looked unstoppable behind a then-relatively anonymous quarterback named Colin Kaepernick. But then the power in the Superdome went on the fritz, and an eerie delay ensued, after which a revitalized Ravens emerged to win Ray Lewis his second ring. It was a rare miss for Nate.

Anyway, I asked Nate who he had this time around, and he told me that his model had been favoring the Seahawks. Characteristically, Nate nailed the outcome of a game that was really sort of over by halftime, when we treated our guests to an incredible show from a cheer ensemble hailing from nearby Northern New Jersey.

And yet the real game I’ve been tracking has more to do with the NFL’s own business. Reporting from the grounds of the Super Bowl in Santa Clara, my partner John Ourand relayed commissioner Roger Goodell’s plans to begin renegotiating his league’s media rights with partners as soon as this fall. After all, the 11-year, $113 billion media deals that Goodell inked a few years ago now look like Sunday coupon pricing. The far less hegemonic NBA, of course, is now operating in the first year of its 11-year, $76 billion deals.

In Goodell’s Bidding War Begins…, John presages the winners and the losers, and articulates the existential stakes within the media industry. And in a valuable sidecar, our partner Julia Alexander delivered a characteristically exceptional assessment of the league’s attempt to match the NBA’s international manifest destiny by booking and marketing games abroad: An NFL World Domination Reality Check might surprise you. Indeed, the NFL might have become the world’s most powerful de facto media company, but the rules of the game continue to change. It’s one of the stories of our time, and precisely what you should expect to read about in Puck.

Have a great weekend,

Jon

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