Facts du Jour

🏈📺 Super good ratings… More than 100 million Americans watched Super Bowl LVI on live TV this past Sunday. Across all of NBC’s platforms – including streaming service Peacock – the game drew 112.3 million viewers, making it the most-watched Super Bowl since 2015.

🎤 We don’t talk about Encanto… enough. The Disney film’s soundtrack is No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the fourth straight week and fifth week overall. It also has five individual songs in the Top 40, including We Don’t Talk About Bruno, which remains at No. 1 for the third straight week.

📝 The Great Application… Americans filed 5.4 million applications to start new companies in 2021, according to census data. That’s a 53% jump from pre-pandemic levels in 2019. Roughly one-third of the applications were classified as "high-propensity,” meaning they're new businesses that are likely to create additional jobs.

🥉🍿 On the podium… Spiderman: No Way Home officially passed Avatar on Monday to become the third-biggest movie ever at the domestic box office (not adjusted for inflation). The Sony/Marvel collab has now grossed $760.9 million since launching exclusively in theaters in December, more than three times as much as the next highest-grossing movie of the pandemic era, Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, which brought in $224 million.

💰 Charity case… According to new securities filings, Elon Musk donated $5.7 billion in Tesla stock to charity last November, making him one of 2021’s top philanthropists. The donation took place amidst a larger series of stock sales by Musk, who sold $16+ billion worth of Tesla shares in the final two months of last year. In December, Musk estimated he would pay over $11 billion in 2021 taxes.