The Justice Department is investigating the National Football League over alleged anticompetitive practices that harm consumers, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday citing anonymous sources familiar with the probe, although the exact scope of the investigation was not immediately clear and not confirmed by investigators or the league.

KEY BACKGROUND

In March, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, asked the Justice Department to examine the NFL’s practice of simultaneously licensing the rights to broadcast games to “subscription streaming platforms, premium cable networks, and technology companies.” The Utah senator said this practice might no longer be protected as “sponsored telecasting” of games as protected in the Sports Broadcasting Act, which was written when games were only available on broadcast television available to all. According to Lee’s letter, a person who wanted to watch every NFL game last season would have had to pay almost $1,000 on various cable and streaming service subscriptions, as well as fees for high-speed internet or satellite connections. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. Patrick Ryan, D-N.Y., sent their own letter to the FCC in April, asking regulators to examine whether acquisitions and “forced bundling” have forced consumers to pay higher prices for packages including games they don’t want.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharyfolk/2026/04/09/federal-investigators-probing-nfl-for-alleged-anticompetitive-practices-report-says/

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Delta is raising fees for checked luggage this week, according to a statement from the company sent to Forbes on Tuesday—as it seeks to cover the increase in jet fuel prices driven by the U.S. war in Iran.

Key Facts

Other Airlines Raise Luggage Fees

Delta is the third U.S. airline to announce price increases for baggage as oil disruptions related to the Iran war continue to impact air travel. United announced a similar price hike last week, also raising prices for checked bags by $10. JetBlue also announced changes to their checked baggage fees last week, raising fees for off-peak travel by $4 and peak travel by $9.

Key Background

Jet fuel prices have skyrocketed in the last few weeks due to the ongoing war in Iran. After the U.S. and Israel began a campaign of air strikes against the country on Feb. 28, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that separates it from the Arabian Peninsula. About 20 million barrels of oil per day passed through the strait in 2025, according to the International Energy Association, or about 25% of the world’s oil transported by sea. The closure has caused prices for oil and petroleum products like jet fuel to spike. The average price of jet fuel reached $4.69 per gallon on Monday, according to data compiled by aviation trade group Airlines for America—up from $2.50 per gallon on Feb. 27, one day before the war began.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharyfolk/2026/04/07/delta-raises-fees-for-checked-bags-as-iran-war-spikes-jet-fuel-prices/

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Coreweave shares popped 13% after announcing a deal with Anthropic on Friday to power its AI model Claude, following a $21 billion partnership with Meta announced Thursday.

KEY BACKGROUND

CoreWeave primarily generates revenue by building and renting out data centers packed with Nvidia GPUs that provide the energy and processing power to train and run AI models. Demand for infrastructure to develop AI has exploded since the release of ChatGPT in 2022, with Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon committing a combined $700 billion just this year in a race to build the most sophisticated and advanced models. On Tuesday, Anthropic announced that its leaked Mythos model was so powerful that they would be holding back from releasing it to the public because of its ability to find vulnerabilities in software programs. The Claude maker said it would instead provide the model to 40 select companies including Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft in a cybersecurity initiative dubbed Project Glasswing. Anthropic was founded in 2021 by siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei and several former OpenAI employees who departed the ChatGPT maker over concerns about the company’s direction with AI safety. Anthropic is now valued at $380 billion and announced it had reached an annual revenue run rate of $30 billion Monday, surpassing OpenAI’s $25 billion annualizedrevenue as of February. OpenAI is now valued at $852 billion. 

BIG NUMBER

$2.5 trillion. That’s how much research firm Gartner expects global spend to build AI will reach in 2026, up 44% from last year. AI infrastructure will drive the spend, making up more than half of that figure, the firm estimates.

TANGENT

The deals come as CoreWeave is simultaneously on an aggressive financing spree. The company is targeting $30 billion to $35 billion in capital expenditures for 2026, up from roughly $15 billion in 2025. Billionaire CEO Mike Intrator defended the spending strategy after the company's February earnings report drew criticism for the increase. "I understand the concerns that people have as they see us allocating a massive scale of money to this market, but the truth of the matter is, our backlog is enormous," he told CNBC at the time. Since going public in March 2025, the stock is up 160%, but is down nearly 45% from its peak last June. This year, the stock has been volatile, up 30% since January.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/aliciapark/2026/04/10/coreweave-stock-surges-13-on-anthropic-deal-a-day-after-21-billion-meta-partnership/

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Meta released Muse Spark, previously named Avocado, on Wednesday, the much-anticipated—and delayed—first large language mode under AI chief Alexandr Wang, sending Meta shares soaring as the company seeks to catch up to industry AI giants OpenAI, Google and Anthropic.

BIG NUMBER

$135 billion. That is how much money Meta expects to spend on AI this year, nearly double what it spent in 2025.

FORBES VALUATION

We estimate Wang’s net worth at $3.2 billion. The entrepreneur was the world’s youngest self-made billionaire until October 2025, when Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan took over the title.

TANGENT

Meta is in the thick of litigation accusing it of designing addictive apps harmful to children and was recently ordered to pay $375 million in damages after a New Mexico jury ruled that the company enabled child exploitation on its platforms. A California jury also found Meta liable in a landmark social media addiction case, forcing the company to pay $3 million in damages to a woman who accused it of intentionally designing its apps to be addictive to children.

Forbes:https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2026/04/08/meta-shares-spike-after-tech-giant-launches-muse-spark-its-ai-bid-against-openai-google/

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President Donald Trump is considering moving U.S. troops from North Atlantic Treaty Organization members that have not backed the war against Iran and moving them to more supportive countries, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, while he also mulls trying to withdraw the U.S. from NATO altogether.

The proposal would involve removing American troops stationed in countries Trump believes were not supportive of the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran and moving them to countries deemed helpful amid the conflict, the Journal reported.

The potential punishment against some NATO members is one of several being circulated in the White House, according to the Journal.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who met with Trump in a closed-door meeting Wednesday, did not speak to the validity of the Journal’s report in an interview with CNN, remaining tight-lipped and saying he had a very “frank” and “open discussion” with Trump.

Trump and Rutte’s meeting came after Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump has considered withdrawing from NATO, the 32-member alliance that acts as a collective military defense for the countries under its banner.

But Trump cannot unilaterally withdraw the U.S. from NATO under a 2023 law that says withdrawal requires a two-thirds Senate approval (right now, including at least 14 Democrats supporting it) or a formal act of Congress.

That law was co-sponsored by then Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Trump’s secretary of state, who recently told Fox News that after the war with Iran, “we are going to have to reexamine” the U.S. relationship with NATO.

TANGENT

The U.S. and Iran reached a ceasefire agreement Tuesday night, with Trump saying the two countries would “work closely” to establish a regime change and remove nuclear materials. The agreement was reached after Trump threatened strikes on civilian infrastructure alongside a statement in which he said “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Iran accused the U.S. of breaking the ceasefire after Israel conducted bombings in Lebanon. Trump and Vice President JD Vance claimed Iran misunderstood the terms of the ceasefire and that Lebanon was not included within it.

WHAT NATO COUNTRIES HAVE BACKED TRUMP’S WAR ON IRAN?

Canada, the Czech Republic, Albania, North Macedonia, Lithuania and Latvia are the only NATO countries to issue letters of support for the strikes the U.S. and Israel have carried out against Iran.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2026/04/08/trump-mulls-pulling-us-troops-out-of-nato-countries-opposing-iran-war-report-says/

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Nintendo’s new “Pokémon Champions” game is facing a negative response from fans who say the graphics are poor and the gameplay is limited, a stark reversal from the acclaimed “Pokémon Pokopia” game it released just weeks ago, as Nintendo erases the gains “Pokopia” helped its stock make.

Key Facts

What Are Fans Saying About “pokémon Champions”?

A primary complaint among “Pokémon” fans is the graphics on “Champions” are allegedly poor. Many fans complained the game appears to run on a 30 frames-per-second rate, slower than previous games like “Pokopia,” which reports say can run close to 60 fps. Some players reported bugs with transferring their Pokémon from the Pokémon Home app, and other gamers made posts on Reddit and X reporting what appear to be gameplay glitches. Fans also complained the game does not support the standard 6 vs. 6 battle format, in which a player and their opponent both use a full team of six Pokémon to battle one another. The game instead supports using three or four Pokémon in single or double battles. Kenneth Shepard, a writer for gaming publication Kotaku, wrote he is “astounded by the limitations” the game is placing on battling, saying it is “constricting competitive play in a way” the Pokémon series has not before. Some negative posts about “Champions” garnered attention on social media. “How many months did we wait for to get a functionally worse game?” one user posted on X alongside a video depicting an apparent in-game glitch, garnering 3 million views and 18,000 likes. Centro Leaks, a widely followed social media account that posts Pokémon news and rumors, called the game’s launch “TERRIBLE” in a post listing multiple alleged flaws, garnering 23,000 likes. 

Key Background

The release of the tepidly received “Champions” comes just weeks after Nintendo released its best-reviewed Pokémon game to date. “Pokopia” is the best-reviewed Pokémon game on Metacritic, a video game review aggregator, with a score of 89 out of 100. The game usurped the title from “Pokemon Y,” which was released for 3DS consoles in 2013. Some gamers noted the apparent irony of Nintendo releasing a well-received and a poorly received game back-to-back. “The Pokémon Company had to balance the scales somehow after getting all that goodwill from Pokopia's success,” a top comment on Reddit states.

Tangent

Other pressures have caused Nintendo’s stock price to fall in recent months. Though the success of “Pokopia” gave Nintendo stock a boost after months of decline, Joost van Dreunen, CEO of gaming consulting firm Aldora and professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, previously told Forbes the success of one game wouldn’t alleviate other structural concerns like the surging cost of memory chips. Increased demand for RAM memory chips by AI data centers has siphoned supply from consumer products, making these chips more expensive for game manufacturers. The gaming industry was also rocked over the past year by President Donald Trump’s tariffs, which hit countries including China and Vietnam—where many gaming devices are manufactured—particularly hard, forcing some gaming companies to raise prices on their flagship consoles. Bloomberg also reported in March that Nintendo would pull back on Switch 2 console manufacturing as demand fell behind expectations during the 2025 holiday season, which caused the company’s stock to decline as much as 6% in one day.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2026/04/08/fans-blast-pokmon-champions-game-as-nintendo-wipes-pokopia-stock-gains/

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As the World Cup draws closer, hotel associations in host cities tell Forbes they are resigned to seeing a smaller economic lift than FIFA had promised.

KEY FACTS

CRUCIAL QUOTE

“My hunch is the World Cup will be a huge success as a sporting tournament. On TV, the stadiums will appear full or almost full—but that's not necessarily the same thing as a tourism success,” Alan Fyall, associate dean at the University of Central Florida’s Rosen College of Hospitality Management, told Forbes. 

DEMAND FAILS TO LIVE UP TO FIFA HYPE 

Some World Cup host cities are grateful they didn’t put all their eggs in the World Cup basket. “Contrary to the massive hype” accompanying FIFA’s World Cup announcement a year ago, when the soccer body forecasted millions of international visitors would deliver a $30.5 billion economic boost to the U.S., “demand has certainly not been at anywhere near that level,” Vijay Dandapani, president and CEO of the Hotel Association of New York City, told Forbes, adding that forward hotel bookings in New York for June and July are virtually identical to the same period last year. “Now, could all of that change and we see a rush of business? We all certainly hope so, but hope is not an expectation.” Philadelphia hoteliers “weren’t thrilled” when FIFA recently cancelled roughly 2,000 room reservations for the tournament, Ed Grose, president and CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Hotel Association, told Forbes. “But at the same time, there's still a lot going on in Philadelphia this year. We are still hoping for an awesome FIFA World Cup, but even without that, we’re still having a banner year” thanks to two citywide conventions hosted while the tournament is taking place. In California’s Bay Area, many hotel leaders gauged World Cup demand more conservatively because they remember the last time the U.S. hosted the tournament in 1994, Alex Bastian, president and CEO of the Hotel Council of San Francisco, told Forbes. They tracked team placements and match schedules and “brought a clear understanding of the nuances and the true financial impact of the tournament,” he said, “and as a result, they adopted a more conservative forecasting strategy. That being said, we remain excited about the event, not only for its economic potential but because it will put our city in a global spotlight.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2026/04/08/hotels-world-cup-economic-boon-not-materializing/

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Shares of Universal Music Group, the world’s largest record label that houses artists like Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar, surged early Tuesday after billionaire Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square offered to buy the company in a transaction worth about $64 billion.

Shares of UMG are up nearly 10% as of 9 a.m. EST on Tuesday, hours after Ackman’s Pershing Square announced a bid to buy the major record label.

Pershing Square offered to purchase UMG—which is listed on the Euronext Amsterdam stock exchange—in a transaction that would value the company at €30.40, or about $35.13, per share, and pay €9.4 billion, or $10.86 billion, in cash to UMG shareholders.

The transaction would merge the record label with Pershing Square SPARC Holdings, and it would shift UMG’s primary stock listing from Amsterdam to the New York Stock Exchange.

Ackman said he is looking to buy UMG because its “stock price has languished due to a combination of issues that are unrelated to the performance of its music business,” citing the postponement of UMG’s New York stock listing, uncertainty over billionaire Vincent Bolloré’s 18% stake, underutilization of its balance sheet and suboptimal investor relations, among other issues.

The deal proposed a new employment contract and compensation agreement for UMG CEO Lucian Grainge, and Ackman said the board would be “refreshed” to include Michael Ovitz, co-founder and former chairman of Creative Arts Agency, as its chair with two additional representatives from Pershing Square and members of the current UMG board.

Ackman said the cash portion of the transaction would be funded with about $2.9 billion in cash from Pershing Square, $6.2 billion in debt financing and $1.7 billion from selling UMG’s stake in Spotify.

BACKGROUND

Ackman previously expressed interest in UMG in 2021, vowing to buy a 10% stake in UMG through his SPAC, but he abandoned the deal after pushback from regulators. He purchased a 10% stake instead through Pershing Square, and he sat on the company’s board of directors until he resigned in 2025, citing other commitments. While on the board, Ackman pushed for UMG to shift to a New York stock listing, saying in 2024 the company “trades at a large discount to its intrinsic value with limited liquidity in significant part due to it not having its primary listing” in the United States. Ackman noted in a slide deck posted to his X account Tuesday morning UMG’s shares are down 39% from its peak two years ago, saying it is “trading near an all-time low.”

CHIEF CRITICS

Nicolas Marmurek, an analyst at Square Global, told Bloomberg the proposal “looks very much dead from the start” unless Bolloré supports the acquisition. “We doubt Bolloré will accept such terms, and had Bolloré been on board he would be recommending the transaction. This is very much a move by Pershing Square to put the proposal in front of shareholders,” Marmurek said.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2026/04/07/universal-music-group-shares-surge-after-bill-ackmans-pershing-square-offers-to-purchase-label/

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Follow Steve Forbes: What's Ahead 

Steve Forbes breaks down the ugly truth about the cost—and efficacy—of alternatives to fossil fuels like windmills and solar panels, which have stifled Europe's economy and will do the same to the U.S.

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Trump gave Iran a deadline to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or “all Hell will reign down on them.”

Trump’s threat comes only hours after Iran rejected a temporary ceasefire proposal, multiple outlets reported.

Mojtaba Ferdousi Pour, head of Iran’s diplomatic mission in Cairo, told the Associated Press Iran “won’t merely accept a ceasefire,” adding, “We can only accept an end of the war with guarantees that we won’t be attacked again.”

Iran reportedly sent their own peace proposal through Pakistan, multiple outletsreported citing Iranian state media.

However, Trump implied the U.S. already rejected this proposal—speaking to reporters at Monday’s White House Easter Egg Roll, Trump called Iran’s offer “a significant proposal,” but immediately added, “it’s not good enough, but it’s a very significant step.”

Trump also insisted his deadline of Tuesday night at 8 p.m. EDT for Iran to make a ceasefire deal would be his final deadline—one day after threatening the country’s power plants and bridges.

Trump also claimed the U.S. was “obliterating” Iran, and said, “they just don’t want to say ‘uncle,’ they don’t want to cry as the expression goes, ‘uncle,’ but they will,” adding that if they don’t, “they will have no bridges, they will have no power plant, they will have no anything.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2026/04/06/iran-rejects-trumps-ceasefire-proposal-as-deadline-nears/

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