Numlock News: October 1, 2026 • Beatles, Kelce, Hockey

Oct 01, 2026

By Walt Hickey

Apple

Apple Corps — no, not that one, the other one — posted income of 44 million pounds in the 11 months ending in December 2025, up from 31.8 million pounds in the 12 months ending in January 2025. The company, which was set up in 1967 to exploit the audio, visual and other royalty income related to The Beatles, posted six million pounds in pre-tax profits, giving a sense of how much the Beatles licensing business is bringing the band’s members and their heirs decades after they split up. This is, if anything, a bit of a fallow period for the Beatles’ licensing, as the company previously benefited from the Get Back documentary miniseries and in 2024 stopped making money from the Love stage show that the company produced with Cirque du Soleil from 2006 to 2024. That said, with a quartet of films in production and slated for release in April 2028, things are bound to pick up for the company soon enough.

James Hurley, The Times

Plug-In

California’s governor has signed into law a bill that allows residents to install plug-in solar systems, a popular way to cut down on energy bills through small “balcony solar” systems. This makes California the 10th state to approve plug-in solar since 2025, and another bill is currently sitting on the desk of New York’s governor. The balcony solar systems are small compared to larger solar installs, typically just two to four panels that can hang from a terrace or in the backyard and which plug directly into a wall outlet, costing between $300 and $2,000 up front but making that back over the course of a year or two thanks to lower utility bills. The California bill limits systems to generating 1.2 kilowatts, and they cannot feed power back to the grid.

Toddy Woody, Bloomberg

Kelce

Across the first three weeks of the NFL season, an NFL Sunday Ticket advertisement featuring former Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce and his wife Kylie has been inescapable, airing 191 times according to iSpot data. The Kelces have single-handedly accounted for 14 percent of all ad airings featuring celebrities. The second-most visible gameday celebrity is Peyton Manning, who is shilling for both Bud Light as well as Nationwide insurance; Jared Goff (82 airings) pushing Little Caesars is good for third place, followed by Shane Gillis (78 airings with Bud Light) and Saquon Barkley (64 with both DirecTV and Nationwide). Jason’s sibling Travis Kelce, once a fixture of the ad space, has been completely absent from advertisements after inconspicuously marrying a billionaire, evidently earlier this summer.

Anthony Crupi, Sportico

English Tourists

A cache of early medieval coins found in Rome appears to confirm the existence of Schola Saxonum, an English area within the eternal city that appealed to visiting Anglo-Saxons. As a result of this discovery of 30 coins — 23 minted in the 10th century, 20 of which are Anglo-Saxon pennies minted in the names of Edward the Elder, Æthelstan and Eadred — researchers contend that the English quarter in Rome was allowed to use their own currency, a right not offered to other foreign nationals. An account by a Welsh scholar in 893 asserts that Pope Marinus allowed the English special rights given their demonstrations of piety, and this archaeological discovery is evidence that it indeed was the case.

James Woodford, New Scientist

Loser’s Point

In 1999, the NHL made a change in how points were awarded to teams at the end of games, changing from a system that gave a team two points in the standings for a win and one point for a tie. Now, teams get two points for any win, one point for an overtime loss and no points for a regulation loss. This incentive shift has had desired effects — teams stopped playing for a tie in regulation — but also undesirable ones, like incentivizing playing for overtime and league-wide point inflation as a result of more and more three-point games. Last season, 326 NHL games were awarded three points in total, the most ever, with 24.8 percent of all 2025-26 games giving three points. The average team racked up 10.2 loser points over the course of the season. The solution is to make every game worth three total points; the NHL, in its “let’s put ice hockey teams in the desert” infinite wisdom, is staunchly opposed.

Neil Paine, Neil’s Substack

Credit

In 2025, credit cards made up 34 percent of payments, followed by debit cards at 31 percent, and cash at 14 percent. That is a significant realignment from 2015, when cash was king and made up a third of all payments, followed by debit cards (29 percent) and credit cards (18 percent). Part of this shift is the rise of online shopping, with 92 percent of Americans preferring to use credit or debit for online payments.

Jenn Hatfield, Pew Research Center

Box Office

Digger, the ambitious new film from Academy Award-winning director Alejandro Gonzàlez Iñárritu starring Tom Cruise, opens this weekend amid mixed reviews from critics and fears that the satire may whiff at the box office. The opening projections for the film are in the $12 to $15 million range, which is solid for more arthouse, indie or Oscar fare, but would be disastrous given how much money Warner Bros. reportedly budgeted for this, greenlighting $125 million for its budget but reportedly rising to $160 million to $180 million after going over schedule. Meanwhile, Anne Hathaway is expected to pull off a hat trick with her third No. 1 movie of 2026, as Verity, a Colleen Hoover adaptation, is projected to do great.

Rebecca Rubin, Variety

Thank you to Numlock’s paid subscribers, whose support guarantees this stays ad-free. If you pay to subscribe, you get a Sunday edition! Subscribing is the single best way to support a thing you like to read:

Numlock News is written each day by Walt Hickey. Email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Every post is entirely by a human; send corrections or typos to the copy desk at copy@numlock.news. If you enjoy Numlock, tell a friend, word of mouth is the only way that independent publications like this one grow.

Check out my book, You Are What You Watch: How Movies and TV Affect Everything, and subscribe to the Numlock Awards newsletter.

Previous Sunday subscriber editions: Garbage Fire · Fanfic · Young Money · Crumbling Facades · The Adventure Zone · Outdoor Cats · Imported Beer · Auteurs · Overflowing Cups ·