The World Cup has kicked off in Qatar. It will be a little different to previous events. For starters, Qatar has spent around $220 billion on infrastructure, dwarfing the $11.6 billion spent by Russia for the 2018 event. It is also being held in a country where homosexuality and alcohol consumption are punishable with lashings and/or jail time. Quick to embrace the culture, Ecuador flogged the home team 2-0 in a one-sided opening match.

The lowdown

• 💉 Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes sentenced to more than 11 years prison for fraud.

• 🐭 Former CEO Bob Iger will return to Disney for two years, replacing Bob Chapek after disappointing earnings report.

•  💲Collapsed crypto exchange FTX owes its 50 largest creditors more than $3 billion.

Flex your finance muscle 💸💪

What do Taylor Swift tickets and Grindr shares (more on that below) have in common?

The IPO pop💰

An ‘IPO pop’ occurs when a company’s share price surges on its first day of trading. It is somewhat counterintuitive, but this should disappoint investors, as it indicates that the shares were not priced correctly to begin with. The investors could have sold shares at a higher price and either raised more money or given up less of the company for the money it did raise. The seller has failed to capture the full value. 

While the term refers to a company’s initial public offering of shares on an exchange, the same rationale can apply to the sale of concert tickets. Taylor Swift concert tickets (which have now been canceled) were being sold by third parties for tens of thousands of dollars more than their face value. Taylor Swift had failed to capture the full value of her shows and some of that value had been taken up by scalpers.

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Grindr surges on stock market debut

Grindr’s share price shot up more than 400% on its first day on the public markets. The stock opened at $16.90 and at one point reached $71.51 before closing at $36.50.

The company listed on the NYSE through a SPAC merger with Tiga Acquisition Corp. Some speculated ($) that the wild increase in the share price was caused by a dearth of shares available to be traded, after 99% of shareholders opted to redeem their shares in the SPAC after the deal’s completion.

Grindr named a new management team in preparation for the public listing, including former Disney executive Vanna Krantz as CFO.

Keeping with today’s World Cup theme and highlighting just how popular the app is among the LGBT community, it may surprise you to read that the app is even used in Qatar.

The content we're consuming today

• FT on YouTube: Qatar's World Cup legacy | FT Scoreboard.

• FT: Lessons from a decade of ‘Candy Crush’($).

Off-balance sheet items

• Highlights from the FIFA World Cup opening match Qatar v Ecuador.

The bottom line