June 26th, 1996 – the day of my introduction to sports heartbreak. The Euro ’96 tournament was the first sporting event that I was fully aware of and engrossed in. It took hold of me and the whole country with the songs, flags, sticker books, news and a fervour that was not seen again until the London 2012 Olympics. It was a a hopeful time. It transformed the country. It truly felt that football was coming home.

But it didn’t.

Instead, we were handed the crushing blow of a defeat on penalties. If ‘football coming home’ meant England would crash out in a very predictable manner and cause fans, players and media to retreat into pessimism and bitterness that would echo over the next 25 years.

You never forget your first sports heartbreak. The surroundings, the people, the location, but more importantly, the singular moment. Whether it’s a miss, a save, a goal, a sending off, a make, it becomes so easy to visualise and impossible to forget. The singular moment of Gareth Southgate’s missed penalty will forever be seared in my mind.

June 27th, 1996 – the day after my introduction to sports heartbreak. From the disappointment of my sofa and bed to the anger of the playground. Every boy and girl focusing the vitriol towards Gareth Southgate in a microcosm of playgrounds, offices, newsrooms, TV studios, radio stations and classrooms across the country. A nation retreating into pessimism and bitterness. A nation united in its hatred for Gareth Southgate.

What is different about my experience is what happened next. We filed into school to begin our classes for the day but my teacher had other ideas. Mrs. Thompson sat us down, a class of 9 and 10 year olds, and told us the story of a hero who had the courage to step up and take a sudden death penalty on football’s biggest stage. A defender nonetheless, who could have shrunk from the moment but instead chose to step up. She forced us to put ourselves in his shoes, to take on the weight of that responsibility and showed us that he should be admired instead of villainised. Mrs. Thompson ended the address by asking who we thought was a hero of the tournament, to which myself and my classmates effusively declared ‘Gareth Southgate!’ That indelible oration has forever been a salve to the broken heart of that penalty miss.

June 30th, 2021 – A 2-0 win against Germany and it’s impossible not to think back on the Euro ’96 tournament, Gareth Southgate and that penalty miss. The victory served as a reputation redemption for Southgate, as a cathartic exercise for the English psyche. Now anything was possible.

July 11th, 2021 – Euro ’20 final, England vs. Italy at Wembley. England have dispatched Ukraine and Denmark with relative ease and now Southgate is the embodiment of calm, unflappable leadership. The players love him, the fans love him and the country loves him. The first major international final appearance for England since 1966. A belief and optimism brought back to the team for the first time in my lifetime.

Win, lose or penalty shootout in the final against Italy, Southgate will continue to be a hero for me. I’m hopeful that the rest of the country will feel the same way. Where previously there would be heartbreak, bitterness and anger, I hope Southgate and the team will be celebrated as heroes. In that sense, Southgate has already brought football home.

It is hard to know where to start with the analysis for this company. On the one hand is a recently legalised industry that is in its infancy, but still with massive potential for growth as new states and new users experiment with online gambling. On the other hand, the industry is still recovering from COVID-19 and the impact it has had on the sports industry. The share price has already surged and fallen back, as well as growing net losses.

Realistically, it should have been at the bottom of its value the last six months with no actual sports taking place to gamble on but we don’t really live in that world anymore. It’s inarguable that the market for sports gambling has plenty more room to run. The decision by the Supreme Court in 2018 opened up the potential for sports betting to take off around the country, with many states taking the plunge. 15 States plus D.C. and Puerto Rico have authorized online/mobile functionality, with another 7 allowing for sports betting at retail locations.

The total population within these states is roughly 137m according to Census Bureau population estimates for 2019, out of a total US population of 331m. There’s approximately 200m more people to expand this market to cover although obviously, that doesn’t strip out the under 18 year olds who wouldn’t be allowed to gamble. It should still serve as a benchmark in terms of how much more the market could potentially grow. Sports betting legalization enjoys strong public support with 63% approving of the Supreme Court’s decision and 8-in-10 people support legalizing gambling in their state, according to a 2019 study by the American Gaming Association.

Now that sports have returned in close to their full capacity, the same should also be true of expenditures towards betting on the games. DraftKing’s Q3 2020 results shed some light on the past year and the toll it took on the industry. On a quarterly basis, the company previously saw a peak in revenues in Q419, with estimated revenues of $131m. According to the company’s earning transcripts, its Q1 2020 revenue was up by 60% year-on-year prior to March 11, 2020 due to its launch of its sportsbook offering in Indiana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and West Virginia in the third and fourth quarters of 2019, and Iowa in the first quarter of 2020.

From mid-March 2020, revenue declined due to the suspension and cancellation of sports seasons and sporting events. This led to a dropoff in users, engagement and spending on the platform as a result. By Q3 2020, the NBA, NFL and other sports had returned, which led to revenue for the quarter of $132.8m, higher than its previous peak in Q419. However, the loss of revenue over a large part of the year led to widening net losses as the company spent but had very little coming in. DraftKings recorded a net loss of $347m in Q3 2020, its largest single quarter loss by far.

The latest results for its monthly users and spend on a per user basis are also encouraging in their Q3 2020 results. The company defines its Monthly Unique Payers (MUPs) metric as “the number of unique paid users (“payers”) per month who had a paid engagement (i.e., participated in a real-money DFS contest, sports betting or casino game) across one or more of our product offerings via our platform.” Participating in an actual ‘engagement’, ie. placing a bet is seemingly good measure of payers and they note that they exclude people who have money deposited but haven’t placed a bet. When it comes to company specific metrics, this seems like a reasonable definition which is not always the case. As a follow-on, they also have an Average Revenue per MUP (ARPMUP) metric, defined as “the average monthly revenue for a reporting period, divided by MUPs (i.e., the average number of unique payers) for the same period.”

The company passed 1mn monthly users in Q3 for the first time, as sports started and pent-up demand brought people back to the platform. Not surprising that average monthly spend would drop from a high of $63 to $34 as the more dedicated users gives way to casual users spending a lower amount to bring down that average. Growing this number moving forward will be important to sustaining revenue growth. $34 ARPMUP is just below the $39 average in 2019 but with NBA set to return in Q4 and into Q1 2021 alongside the NFL, I would expect to see a strong two quarters for the company.

DraftKings and its competitors also offers a range of other non-sports related gambling offerings within its app. It lists these all under the ‘online gaming’ business line but outside of its sportsbook, it also offers daily fantasy sports (DFS) and iGaming, which is an online version of games found in traditional casinos, such as blackjack, roulette and slot machines. Its unclear which of these three are the largest contributors to this segment. DFS has been the company’s historic focus, iGaming may be more consistent but my guess would be that the sportsbook brings in the most revenue.

This is more apparent when you look at DraftKings’ closest competitor in the market, Flutter Entertainment, and its breakdown of revenues by activity. Flutter is a bookmaking holding company formed of the merger between Paddy Power and Betfair, before it also acquired The Stars Group. In 2019, it agreed to acquire FanDuel in the US, historically DraftKings largest competitor. Flutter is now the largest bookmaking company in the world with a market cap of $27b. Because it is formed from companies in the UK and Australia, two countries where online sports betting as been legal for years, it provides a glimpse into the future of the industry.

For example, the total North American gaming industry was estimated to generate approximately $134 billion in annual gross gaming revenue in 2019, according to H2 only 5% of which was derived from online gaming. When compared to other developed markets such as the UK, H2 estimates that more than 45% of the U.K.’s gross gaming revenue comes from online betting. This demonstrates the growth potential of the US market as more states open up and allow online transactions. DraftKings already has a market capitalisation of close to $19b and would be lucky to see sales of $500m for 2020. There’s plenty of room for growth but much of it seems priced in already.

Notably, you can see from the breakdown of Flutter’s revenues that sports bookmaking is the largest single contributor to its business, across different countries, brands and overall, contributing around 60% over 2019 and 2020. Its ‘US’ business line is specific to FanDuel, where it has retained its branding. Given that sporting revenue represents about 60% of its business for FanDuel, the same is likely true for DraftKings too.

Competition in this area of the market is intense and barriers to entry are relatively low. Establishing itself as a top brand in the space is helpful but looking again at the UK market for example, there have consistently been a large number of players in the space with new entrants from overseas trying to garner their own slice. The mergers under Flutter have helped reduce the number of companies in the space but there remains other well-established brands in the UK market, including GVC Holdings now Entain (Bwin, Coral, Ladbrokes), Bet365, William Hill, Betfred, Kindred Group and 888 Holdings. At a certain point, there is little to choose between the platforms, offering similar technologies, betting events and promotions. Gaining an upper hand comes from aggressive marketing and giveaways and doesn’t guarantee ‘stickiness’ to one platform in particular.

Any new innovation, for example, in-game betting and ability to cash out on winnings early, can be copied relatively quickly by the competition. In developed markets, user acquisition is therefore almost entirely based on a zero-sum game of poaching users. The immaturity of the US market means that the company does have some scope to push into new players but this will inevitably run out of rope. DraftKings reports that its sales and marketing expenses grow by 27.3% between 2018 and 2019, reaching $185.3m, accounting for 57.3% of its revenue in 2019. The company did go on to say that it had recouped approximately 90% of its 12 month marketing spend, however.

DraftKings also reported that is has over 4.3m cumulative unique paid users, which means it needs to convert about 3.3m of these into its monthly paying users. The company claims to have a 60% market share of the online gambling market, so the top player ahead of FanDuel. This tracks with search trend data from Google Trends, which tends to show DraftKings as the more popular search term ahead of FanDuel. This is particularly true during the seasonal spikes towards the end of the year and likely spilling over to the end of the NFL season.

It has the advantage for now, although arguably FanDuel is backed by an entity with greater financial resources to potentially outspend the company in the future. Capitalising in the short-term where there is still organic growth to be had has probably led to the spike in the company’s share price during this period. However, when new states run dry, the intensity in competition will result in higher acquisition costs as DraftKings and its rivals look to poach from each other.

Way back in May 2016, shortly after the Philadelphia Eagles traded away significant draft capital to move up to draft Carson Wentz number 2 overall, I wrote some immortal words “…the Eagles made the wrong decision and doomed the team for the next 5 years. Thanks.” I have never been more happy to be wrong.

Much of that opinion was based on the expectation that they would sit him for a year behind Sam Bradford and would miss out on a future 1st round pick that would be valuable in building the team. Instead, they traded Bradford, gained a 1st round pick from the Vikings and used it to snag Super Bowl fumble recover Derek Barnett with the selection. Not bad! So in a way…I was technically correct.

One thing I am also correct about regarding that season is that Carson Wentz deserved to win the MVP that year, even though he got hurt and missed the last few games. What surprises me most is that no one at the time even sought to make the argument for him. Instead, 2017 is regarded as Wentz “playing at an MVP level” and there’s a general consensus that had he not gotten hurt, he would have won. In fact, if he’d stayed healthy, they could have lost the final three of the year with him playing QB at a sub-par level and he still might have ended up winning the award and might still have deserved it too. All it comes down to was the fact he tore his ACL, which somehow invalidated his accomplishments up until that point.

To be clear, I’m not arguing that he should have won based on the stats and wins he was forecast to achieve over those last few games that he missed, I’m arguing that he achieved enough during the games he played to have won the award.

He Clinched The NFC East and Got Them The Number One Seed In 13 Games Started

First of all, its made into a big deal that he missed a large chunk of the season, when realistically he started 13 games out of a possible 16. He missed three games, one of which is Week 17 that top players tend to rest in anyway. So really, he started 13 out of a possible 15 games. He played over 80% of the season.

Here’s an interesting hypothetical: what if he missed the first game of the year because he was holding out for a better contract, came back week 2 and then played every game but sat for week 17. He was the best player on his side of the ball during that time and helped his team to a playoff berth and a division win. Games started 14 out of 16. Would we disregard that person from an award? The answer is no, because that exact same scenario happened with Aaron Donald who won Defensive Player of the Year in the exact same season! Donald started 14 games and at no point did anyone claim this wasn’t enough. Wentz started 13 and gets taken out of all awards considerations!

Why does it matter then that he started 13 games instead of 14? Beating Donald’s team in the process? He clinched the NFC East that day when the Eagles went on to win, guaranteeing them a playoff spot. Due to a Vikings loss on the same day, the Eagles moved into the number one seed in the NFC and valuable home field advantage.

Wentz Was The Player You Remember From That Year

Wentz’s last play of the season was a 2-yard TD to Alshon Jeffrey to give the Eagles a 31-28 lead on the road against a LA Rams team that would go on to win 11 games themselves. The fact that he was able to stay on the field and make that play is impressive itself. In fact, he made a lot of incredible plays that season. He was perhaps the most memorable player in his 13 games started during 2017, making Houdini-like escapes seemingly every week to complete huge plays, passing a TD on a torn ACL and leading game-winning drives. Don’t take my bias for it, the NFL put together its top plays of the regular season and Wentz was featured three times, more than any other player. Brady featured once. There easily could have been at least two more plays from him on that list.

Stats-wise, he wasn’t really even that far behind Brady despite playing 3 less games than him, he even beat him various categories. Wentz threw more TDs that year than Brady! 33 to 32, good enough for second in the league and only one behind Russell Wilson with 34. He also had the best QBR in the league that season and TD Rate, ahead of Brady. The only category Brady led the league in was yards, throwing for 4,577. Brady and Wentz stats are very similar in areas like Interceptions, Int Rate (%), Yards/Attempt, Adj Y/A, Sack Rate (%), and other QB Rating stats. The Patriots ended up with the same record as the Eagles and needed the last day of the year to clinch the 1 seed in the AFC.

Wentz was THE player of the 2017 season and he did it all in fewer games played. He was robbed of the MVP even though he got hurt and I will stand by this opinion for the rest of my life.

Every game and every season counts more for LeBron James than every other player in the league. In Year 17 and at age 35, this might be LeBron’s most important season to date because it might be his last playing at this high of a level. He’s getting a nice rest to be ready for whatever playoff format we end up with, but winning his fourth championship isn’t enough.

In his quest to be the greatest basketball player of all time, the NBA intelligentsia will always put Jordan at number one as long as he more rings. Even if LeBron somehow reaches six or seven, it won’t be a fait accompli that he gets to be the best. There is a level of mysticism around Jordan that is bigger than his accomplishments. Part of that stems from winning six from six appearances. LeBron has lost six finals out of nine. Even if he wins three or four in a row, people will still hold those six losses against him.

So how does LeBron pass Jordan? Longevity. It seems highly unlikely that he’ll pass Jordan in the RINGZZZ debate but what if he wins another MVP, scores the most points in NBA history, wins a championship for three different teams, and plays the most minutes ever?

The Most Terrible Timing for MVP #5

Rewind to March 8th, just a few days before the NBA was forced to suspend the season on the evening of March 11th. The Lakers had beaten the Clippers in a marquee Sunday matchup where LeBron played like the best guy on the court against Kawhi and Paul George. The conversation on all the blogs, podcasts and NBA Twitter was how LeBron was now in the debate for the MVP, a change from the belief that Giannis had already locked up the award. At the same time, Giannis was nursing a knee injury and was expected to miss a few weeks while he rested up.

The Bucks were on a three game losing streak as the season was suspended but still hold a 53-12 record on the season and a 6.5 game lead over the Raptors for the one seed. The Lakers stand at 49-14 with the number one seed in the Western Conference and a 5.5 game lead over the Clippers. With just over 20 games to go, the scenario where Giannis sits out for a few weeks and the Lakers overtake the Bucks for the best record in the NBA is entirely plausible.

So the Lakers lead the NBA in wins, LeBron plays nearly 80 games, leads the league in assists with over 10 per game and also adds in 26 points and 8 rebounds a game. Sure Giannis’ numbers are still ridiculous at 30/14/6 but without the best record, getting hurt down the stretch and losing the all-important momentum for ‘narrative’ could see LeBron wrap up his fifth regular season MVP award.

This is important because it puts him equal to Jordan (and Bill Russell) at five, trailing only Kareem with his six. It puts him in a new tier of accomplishment. The season getting suspended when it did was the worst possible timing for LeBron and his legacy.

The Hunt for the Fourth Ring Is Not As Important As Doing It For Different Teams

A fourth championship doesn’t help LeBron in the debate on the face of it, but should he get there, it does put him in uncharted territory because he will have done it as the best player on three different teams. Robert Horry (7) and John Salley (4) are the only players to have won championships with three teams. Neither of those were the best player on their team and they don’t have a single NBA Finals MVP in any of those combined 11 contests between them.

Presumably, winning his fourth with the Lakers would give him his fourth Finals MVP trophy in addition to the fourth ring. There’s certainly a chance that AD plays a tremendous series on both ends and wins it himself but in this scenario, LeBron gets it because he’s LeBron. This would make him the only player in history with three Finals MVPs for three different teams. Kawhi also has a chance to achieve this accomplishment this year and next, so time is once again of the essence to get there first for LeBron.

It is arguable that wining for three different teams is more difficult than three for the same one. Different situations, GMs, coaches and players, and in LeBron’s case, having a key role in building those teams each time. Starting from scratch each time and still managing to go to eight straight finals along the way. The Warriors managed five straight themselves, with one of the greatest collections of talents ever assembled. The only players who have been to more are Bill Russell, Sam Jones and Tommy Heinsohn, who played for Celtics teams that didn’t matter. No one player has ever done it for different teams along the way. No other player has gotten close as one of the team’s key players especially doing it for different teams. I say key players because James Jones did it as a role player riding LeBron’s coattails as barely a bench player. This achievement requires consistency at an exceptionally high level that a lot of players just never had or were unable to sustain over the many years that LeBron has.

Longevity In Points The Ultimate Goal

To say that LeBron overtaking Kobe Bryant for third most points scored in NBA history was bittersweet is the understatement of the century. As things stand, most NBA points of all time currently looks like this:

This is why every game and every season counts for LeBron. He currently has 1,544 points scored on the season to date and averaged around 2,000 a year his last few seasons in Cleveland. With roughly 20 games to play on the year plus the playoffs and maybe Finals, LeBron has been ‘robbed’ of roughly 500 points for this season. Even adding that 500 to his total leaves him roughly 2,300 points behind Malone, a season total he has only surpassed twice in his career and the last time was in 2008-9.

Without the points from this season he won’t be in a position to overtake Malone until the 2021-2022 season at which point he’ll be 37 years old. He’ll still be a further 1,400 points behind Kareem at that moment. It seems highly unlikely that’ll be averaging 2,000 points a season at that stage of his career, so this is why putting up numbers now while he still can is so important. He has to average at least 1,500 points a year over the next three years to overtake Kareem or something like 1,000 over the next five. This mark is in his sights but an injury, shortened season or who knows what else, pushes that timeline back. I still think he can and will do this and really this is his best argument to say that he was the greatest player of all time.

Catching Kareem in minutes might be more difficult and he is currently about 9,000 minutes behind:

LeBron has played around 2,700 minutes per year over the last few years, which means he’ll need to continue that for another four seasons to pass Kareem so the 2023-24 season. Again, this is likely to dip down as he rests more, so he needs to hit at least 2,250 minutes per year to do it in four years. Across 82 games that is about 27 minutes per game. Kareem did hit 28 minutes per in his age 40 before dropping down to 23 mins per game in his 41st and last year in the league. LeBron plays a different position and has a different skillset, so it is hard to project where he’ll be physically in a few years time. If he could stagger it so that:

2020-21 = 2700 (36 years old)

2021-22 = 2500 (37 years old)

2022-23 = 2000 (38 years old)

2023-24 = 1750 (39 years old)

That would put him right around Kareem’s 57,446 and is akin to a best case scenario. He has an outside shot at getting in the top 3-5 for most assists of all time and should be able to creep up into the top 7-10 all time for steals. Anything he can squeeze in this season helps him in the long run.

There’s a lot of hypotheticals in the scenarios laid out above, but it is my belief that this is what LeBron needs to do to go down as the greatest player in history. At least 5 MVPs, 4 championships and Finals MVP for 3 different teams and becoming the all-time points leader. If he leads the NBA in all-time minutes played in league history, then the argument is over. At that point, he essentially is the face of the NBA. This is why losing just 25% of the season and playoffs is potentially detrimental to his legacy and why he has the most to lose from the coronavirus suspension.

As Lyft gears up for its IPO expected at some point this year, reports already suggest that it is oversubscribed on investor commitments, a positive sign for the company which should allow it to exceed the expected $20-25bn valuation.  Releasing its S-1 is part of that process, and allows outsiders their first glimpse at what is under the hood, so to speak.

The basics all seem pretty impressive and what you might expect from a tech startup that has emerged as one of the major ‘unicorn’ success stories of the last five years. Revenue surpassed $2.16bn for 2018, doubling that of $1.06bn in 2017. The number of active riders (defined as a rider who took at least one trip during the quarter) hit 18.6mn, while the number of rides reached 178.4mn, both indicators increasing by around 50% year-on-year. Gross bookings surpassed $8bn, up by 75%.

The standard net losses that one might expect from being a fast-growing, tech startup in an emerging industry are also prevalent. These losses reached -$911mn in 2018, widening from -$688mn as cost of revenues increased in line with acquiring new riders.  With competition for market share and the need to continue its aggressive expansion still a key part of strategy, it seems highly unlikely that Lyft will be profitable anytime soon.

That may or may not matter in the grand scheme of things and certainly is of no immediate concern for the investors who are oversubscribed on its offering. Lyft has introduced its own metrics called Contribution and Contribution Margin as a means of saying, “if we weren’t expanding rapidly, here’s what our profitability might resemble.”  For that reason, its a meaningless metric for the forseeable future.

Two Long-Term Risks In Its Strategy

Unlike its rival Uber, Lyft will represent a pure-play ridesharing company. Uber has since expanded into food delivery (Uber Eats) and freight hauling, and has a massive presence across the globe. While I think the lack of revenue diversification is not an issue at this point, I am concerned that Lyft has boxed itself into a US-only company. It has expanded into a few areas in Canada, but even then, this will serve as a serious cap to its growth potential.

Lyft has reportedly opened an office in Munich, Germany as of January 2019, and there are indications that it will continue to expand internationally. However, on Uber’s website it reports that it is already in 461 cities outside of North America, spanning all continents and in many cases, has had a presence, brand awareness and customer base for many years. This will cause issues for Lyft if and when it decides to take on Uber around the world, especially if you believe that Uber’s worst days of scandals and a damaged reputation are behind it. That gives Lyft very little leeway to break through in established Uber markets other than competing aggressively on price.

Ultimately, Lyft may decide that its  future is as a North American company only, with a sizeable customer base to target and a slice of the transportation expenditure of $1.7trn in 2017 to capture. However, quarterly growth rates in riders have been slowing and dropped below double-digits for the first in Q418, to 6.9% compared to Q318. Growth rate in the number of rides has also fallen, hitting 10% in the same quarter, whereas these rates averaged over 20% during 2016-2017. This will force it to look outside North America, sooner rather than later, to compete for new riders and not just trying to take share from Uber in the US.

If it doesn’t, its lack of international presence will inevitably hurt the company in its domestic market, as customers will be forced to use Lyft’s competitors whenever they travel outside of the US. This is also the case for those travelling to the US, who might already have been using Uber for years and have never heard of Lyft and see no reason to download a new app for the purposes of a vacation or business meeting. This cohort of international tourists and business people are likely to be among the highest spenders for transportation and on services such as Uber and Lyft, simply as a result of them having to travel. Giving up the vast majority of this consumer group will inevitably hurt Lyft back in the US too.

Investors will no doubt hope that Lyft will turn profitable one day, but if it plans on international expansion, that date is a long way off, if ever. Lyft’s costs and expenses continue to rise a rapid rate, fueled mostly by cost of revenue, which primarily consists of insurance costs required by city regulations for ridesharing, as well as payment processing charges. Cost of revenue came in at $1.2bn in 2018, nearly doubling from $660mn in 2017.

The other major expense was in sales and marketing, which hit $800mn in 2018, an increase of around 42% and $250mn year-on-year. There is scope going forward for marketing and related expenses to slow in the US, as Lyft reported that in the fourth quarter of 2018, approximately 80% of new Active Riders downloaded the Lyft app organically. Again though, this spending will need to be ramped up significantly if it intends to compete internationally, building a brand in new markets and encouraging users to switch from taxis and rival ridesharing apps to one they might not have heard of.

The key will then be to offset this higher spending with more revenues coming in and a higher take rate from bookings. Revenues as a percentage of bookings, the amount riders pay, reached 26.8% in 2018, marking an improvement from 23.1% in 2017 and 18% in 2016. This is higher than the 22.6% that Uber has reported, and its unclear how much higher this number can go without drivers defecting.

Short-Term, These Risks Don’t Matter

Still, these highlighted risks and others such as autonomous vehicles, are not at the front of the minds of those involved with the IPO. Other metrics such as revenue per active rider, which has risen from $15.88 in Q116 to $36.04 in Q418 point to the expectation for stronger growth over the next few years. Revenue growth in yearly terms also proves to be impressive, up by 94.3% year-on-year in Q418 to $670mn compared to $345mn in Q417. No one cares about profitability at the moment but it will be the company’s prerogative to prove that

“Our community and business continue to grow,” said Mark Zuckerberg in his Q4 2018/FY18 earnings call on January 30, 2019. He’s not wrong. Inexplicably, the company added 1mn new daily active users (DAUs) for the US & Canada region in the last quarter of the year, rising from 185mn to 186mn. That’s 1mn new users in the worst quarter of the worst year in the company’s history.

In fairness, the September-December quarter may not have been the worst in 2018 but it did add to the growing list of scandals confronting the company. More data breaches, more user data being shared with third-parties, and your standard opposition research on George Soros to help provide cover for the Russia interference you knew about on your platform. Totally normal.

But seriously, who are these brand new one million DAU who have had their heads buried in the sand for the last few years and suddenly decided to join Facebook?

It also may not actually be one million new users. Yes, DAUs increased from 185mn to 186mn but because we don’t have any extra digits, that could hide some number finagling. In Q318, the company could have had 185,400,000 DAUs and then added 100,001 new ones in Q418 to reach 185,500,001, which the company generously rounded up to 186mn because obviously they would do this. Even so, that’s still 100,000 people who have been living under a rock. Alternatively, its people who were casual users that checked every few days, now becoming daily users because there is such high quality material produced on there every day.

I deleted my own account on December 31st 2018, and apparently I may have been one of the only ones. It was not a decision I made lightly. I’d been wanting to do it for months, if not years, but had never had the time to pull the trigger. Was this due to my outrage and sense of morality over the scandals and New York Times reporting? No, its just because its a boring platform that really offers nothing of value anymore. I rarely checked it and when I did, none of my ‘friends’ were posting anything I cared about. Even the friends-of-friends-of-friends who I’ve kept as Friends in my feed because they provide such terrible/amazing content don’t even publish anything anymore. The ones who write statuses that you immediately screenshot and send to your group of friends, those ‘Friends’.

Its most valuable function is that of a birthday calendar. So that’s what I did on New Year’s Eve, going through the calendar, writing down my friends’ birthdays with a pen and paper, saved down my photos to look through later, then deleted my account and haven’t looked back.

I expect that most other people who want to do this have put this off for the same reason. Facebook’s numbers have stayed steady throughout the rest of the year, starting 2018 with 185mn and staying at this level for the first three quarters. While #DeleteFacebook and other studies led us to believe that people were heading for the exits, it was clearly a trickle rather than a flood. Facebook still has its ‘hooks’ in people and that makes it difficult for people to leave.

But still, who are the new users? I would love to see some interviews or surveys with these people. Did they just get internet or a smartphone in the past few months and say “I’ve heard so much about Facebook, I’m going to try this new-fangled website out”? I’d also be interested to hear their initial impressions of the service. The ‘Ten Year Challenge’ is a sobering reminder that most of the developed world has been way sharing dumb opinions online for over a decade. Its like aliens arriving from space into a post-apocalyptic world and trying to figure out how things got so bad.

Welcome to hell, folks, hope you have your friend’s birthdays written down somewhere because you’re never leaving.

In a school where the faculty is staffed by werewolves, centaurs, con artists, incompetents, Death Eaters, ghost teachers and half-giants, the only one ever to be fired is the one who should have seen it coming.

Professor of Divination, Sibyll Trelawney, is the subject of much derision from other characters in the books, frequently referred to as an “old fraud”. I wasn’t aware from the descriptions that she was particularly old, but the fraud description is one that is revisited often. Of course, as readers, we know that she has made two of the most important prophecies of all time but characters outside of Harry and Dumbledore aren’t privileged to such information. Chief among her detractors is Hermione, who doesn’t even believe Harry when he tells her about the prophecy she makes towards the end of book 3, although does come around to begrudgingly accept her ‘seizure’ prophecies to be somewhat genuine. Others, such as Professor McGonagall, regard her as a fraud throughout but is this a fair assessment?

Pointing to the two historic, game-changing prophecies is a clear win for Trelawney but some might disregard the rest of her record as “human nonsense”. Looking carefully at all the other fortunes, forecasts and predictions she makes throughout the books reveals a more complicated legacy. There is an argument to be made that even excluding the two seizure prophecies, Trelawney is actually a successful seer and worthy of more praise for her foresight.

Unfogging The Prophecy Business

Forecasting the future is an impossible task, with billions of dollars spent on attempting to do just that every year in the Muggle world. From quantitative modelling to tarot cards, there is money to be made in the prediction business but even the best fortune-tellers and computer programmes do not forecast with 100% accuracy. Short of Biff Tannen travelling back in time to gift himself the Sports Almanac, this will always be impossible. It is therefore important to establish this basis for Trelawney, because it is not fair to hold her to a standard of 100% accuracy even if she were to have the gift of Sight, a concept which is never explained in full detail.

Making accurate predictions at a higher rate than the average population would be a sign that she’s a strong diviner. A more precise method would be if her accuracy surpasses that of others in her profession. Outside of the centaurs, there are few indications of any other characters who pride themselves on their ability to tell the future, so comparing her to other Seers is also an impossible task. In the Hall of Prophecy, we are shown thousands of prophecies that have been made by witches and wizards throughout the centuries. Dumbledore remarks on this, “Do you think every prophecy in the Hall of Prophecy has been fulfilled?”, so we are led to believe that other Seers don’t operate with 100% accuracy either. Presumably there must be some level of competency in order to get a prophecy into a glass ball in the Ministry of Magic, and again, not all of these end up being accurate. We are not able to compare her to other forecasters, making it difficult to assess her worth as a Seer.

There is even a distinction to be made between whether a prophecy is fulfilled or not, versus whether it was accurate or not. As we’ve already seen, knowing or not knowing about a prophecy can change the prophecy itself. Should the forecaster be held responsible or given credit when prophecies are expressed to the intended targets and the future changed as a result? The prediction could therefore have been accurate at the time, but was not fulfilled due to the prophecy being made public. Simply, this is to say that there is a lot of noise in the predicting business and we should firstly look to judge Trelawney fairly on what is an impossible scale, without expecting her to get everything right, as no other living creature (magical or otherwise) could do so.

Unfogging Divination Methods

A further complexity stems from the manner in which events are ‘divined’, given that they don’t necessarily come in the form of easy-to-understand roadmaps or visions. It is referred to by Professor McGonagall as “one of the most imprecise branches of magic”. We are introduced to a number of disciplines within the Divination subject including tea leaves, fire omens, crystal balls, dream interpretations, palmistry, planetary movements, Ornithomancy and Heptomology. Aside from perhaps the crystal ball, these methods rely on picking up on various clues and interpreting them into a full story, rather than presenting a clear picture of what is to come. This involves matching dreams, palm lines, planet locations, etc to research done by other witches and wizards on the subjects provided in works such as ‘Unfogging the Future’.

If Trelawney looks at some tea leaves and sees a hippo instead of a Grim, that is obviously her fault for seeing something that is not there. However, if it clearly is a Grim in the tea leaves, she shouldn’t be at fault if the best research on tea leaves says that this is an omen of death. She has to trust the research. If it was actually an omen of good fortune, for example, then that is an area where scholars are at fault rather than a professor of a high school/secondary school. This is clear when she repeats an apparent superstition that “when thirteen dine together, the first to rise will be the first to die” over Christmas dinner in book 3. Here, she is not making a prediction precisely but repeating what is presumably the most accurate magical scholarly Divination wisdom on the subject. In this event, Harry and Ron rise first together, but it is actually Dumbledore, also seated at the table, who dies first. It is hard to designate ‘fault’ to Trelawney in this instance (as well as others), when it is an example of the research on the subject not being sufficiently accurate.

Crystal gazing appears to be the more accurate form of prediction as it does not require the levels of interpretation as the other disciplines. Although from Trelawney’s descriptions, it is likely the hardest to actually do if you cannot ‘See’.  Presumably in an ideal world, Seers use a variety of Divination methods to build a more complete picture of the future; an holistic approach to predict and not rely solely on one interpretation. Jumping to conclusions from just using tea leaves was likely a mistake in her approach from Trelawney, even if the end results were correct. Again, judging her abilities requires some grading on a curve. No one bats .1000, no one predicts the future with 100% accuracy and even centaurs are wrong sometimes, despite spending the majority of their lives stargazing.

While she jumps to early conclusions from the tea leaves in book 3, from what we can tell over subsequent terms and years, all the signs she interprets from various Divination methods point to one clear thing, that Harry is going to die.

Harry Dies In The End

The impetus for this Trelawney re-examination is due to the high level of criticism she faces for her most oft-cited prediction that Harry will meet a “gruesome and early death”. She is laughed at for four years for this but not given credit for the important fact that Harry does actually die early and gruesomely! Without getting into a debate about how dead he really was, Harry is murdered at the tender age of 17 years old at the end of book 7, thus fulfilling the prediction Trelawney made in her very first appearance in book 3. This should count in favour of her record and when viewed in this context, it is easy to add similar accurate projections to her track record. She could have picked anyone in that year group to predict their death, but chose Harry. She is not aware of her own first seizure prophecy (S. P. T. to  A. P. W. B. D. Dark  Lord and (?) Harry Potter), so she wasn’t using this prior knowledge to make an educated guess.

Our heroic trio seem to interpret her predictions on Harry’s death as being something that should happen almost immediately or within the same week of her vocalizing them. They scorn her by claiming that Harry would be “some sort of extra-concentrated ghost” if he’d dropped dead every time she had predicted it. Again, this is not a fair characterization of Trelawney, as she puts no specific timeline on the date exactly but mentions that “[death] comes, ever closer, it circles overhead like a vulture, ever lower . . . ever lower over the castle” in book 4. Lord Voldemort hasn’t even regained his body by this point so by referring to it as ‘getting closer’ is perhaps the best way to describe that three years later he would meet this fate.

She even alludes to the return of Lord Voldemort outside of her second seizure prophecy, where early on in book 4 she states that “I fear the thing you dread will indeed come to pass . . . and perhaps sooner than you think….”. Just months later, Lord Voldemort rises from a cauldron, fulfilling this prediction of hers.

Given all that is tied up in the Harry Potter vs. Lord Voldemort saga, by which I mean it is perhaps the single most important conflict in magical history, even the most rudimentary Seer would be able to sense some sort of dark cloud around Harry or imminent war to come. The centaurs do make reference to this in book 1, as Firenze says his goodbyes to Harry, he remarks “The planets have been read wrongly before now, even by centaurs. I hope this is one of those times.” This suggests that Harry’s death has been foretold by others outside of Trelawney and perhaps it isn’t as bold a prediction as we are led to believe. Even so, her reading of the situation seems to be entirely accurate in my view and this cannot be discounted.

How Many Other Predictions Does She Get Right?

Taking the Harry Will Die prediction as one prediction made many times and giving her one Win for this, that puts her number of correct prognostications up to 3. I then went through the series to find every single prediction or half-prediction that she made and tried to grade her track record. Again, this is a murky business, a number of prognostications she makes are never referred to again and as readers we are not privy to their outcome. Was there a nasty bout of flu in the second term of year 3 that caused some setbacks to her classes? Was Neville late to the second Divination class? Did she lose her voice for a period of time in year 3? All of these are not necessarily wrong, but are at best, an Incomplete grade.

Including the two prophecies and combining the Harry Dies predictions into one, I count a total of 24 other predictions made by Trelawney throughout the series for a total of 27. I gave her three Incomplete grades for the aforementioned questions in the paragraph above. I also graded her as Wrong in four specific instances. She asks whether Neville’s grandmother is well, which could be simply a case that she had a minor cold for all we know but since she’s around for the rest of the series and given the tone of the question, I believe this was an incorrect prediction. She also misfires during Harry’s exam using the orb, where he fakes a vision of Buckbeak flying away but she wrongly believes that the hippogriff will have his head chopped off. In book 4, she guesses that Harry is born in midwinter (wrong) and also gives Harry and Ron top marks for their homework in which they again make up their own predictions.

That means that she is correct on 20 out of 27 predictions, giving her a hit rate of 74%! That is crazy high. If you include the incomplete grades and phrase it differently, she was definitively Wrong on predictions just 15% of the time. Hedge funds would pay her millions of galleons to be that prophetical!

Admittedly, there’s some sham forecasts in amongst these 27, including a few ones which we could remove in the interest of fairness. For example, in book 5 she welcomes them back to Divination saying “you have all returned to Hogwarts safely — as, of course, I knew you would”. Similarly, when she ‘predicts’ that the final exam for the class in book 3 will involve the crystal ball, Hermione’s criticism of her that she sets the exam seems fair here. Also, she notes that in the second term of book 3 they will progress to the crystal ball after they’ve finished with fire omens, but again, this is her choice so it would be generous to attribute these to her superior divination ability.

That still leaves us with 17 correct predictions out of a total of 24 = 71% and in terms of her ‘wrongness’ (discounting incompletes) that is just 17% of her predictions turn out incorrect. Removing her two prophecies puts her at 68%. This all strikes me as very impressive, even being as critical as possible.

A Grim Talent For Predicting

Her most consistent and impressive predictions surround that of bad news and danger, even excluding the aforementioned ‘Harry dying’ forecasts. Neville does break a cup, Hermione does leave Divination forever, Lupin doesn’t last at Hogwarts for long. I’m also willing to give her credit for Lavender’s rabbit dying one day later than she had believed. As I argued earlier, nothing about Divination suggests that information is given in a clear, accurate way but must be interpreted using different methods. If we slightly rephrase the prediction from ‘the thing you are dreading’ to ‘something dreadful’ that is a closer reading of Binky dying. Tea leaves or fire omens don’t provide an exact Cluedo like roadmap to a dead rabbit plus Lavender Brown plus October 15^th, but it is a ‘foggier’ picture to be interpreted. Just because she was one day off and the phrasing was slightly off doesn’t mean she was completely wrong.

She doesn’t show up as much in book 5 or book 6, except as a crazed drunk smelling of cooking sherry, a further indignation that JK Rowling makes her suffer through and continuing as a figure of ridicule. However, during these brief appearances she ends up with accurate assessments. Umbridge asks her to predict something on the spot during the evaluation of one of her classes. Unhappy and knocked off balance by such a demeaning request, Trelawney still comes up with another correct prediction, “Why, I sense something . . . something dark . . . some grave peril . . .”  and continuing to say “I am afraid . . . I am afraid that you are in grave danger!”. By the end of the book, of course, Umbridge insults the entire centaur race and is carried off into the forest to suffer traumas we can only guess at.

In book 6, she alludes to danger in Dumbledore’s path too, referring to card prophecies that hint at “— the lightning-struck tower,” and “Calamity. Disaster. Coming nearer all the time . . .”. Just a few chapters later, Dumbledore is killed at the top of a tower, fulfilling another one of her predictions. Seemingly, Trelawney does have a talent for predicting danger, death and other unfortunate events. Perhaps we should listen to her more often.

You’re Only As Good As The Predictions You Don’t Make

In addition to being branded as an “old fraud”, Trelawney is also unfairly criticized for the predictions she doesn’t make, particularly in books 5 and 6. Umbridge is largely to blame here after firing her, she scathingly remarks that Trelawney should have seen her firing coming. Granted, she didn’t need Divination methods to realise the writing was on the wall but there are other instances when she is laughed at for her lack of omniscience, an impossible standard. McGonagall does this in book 3 when Trelawney asks after Lupin at Christmas dinner and Harry also decries her for not anticipating that she would be thrown unceremoniously from the Room of Requirement in book 6.

In order to accurately see the future; time, energy and resources must be spent on divining a holistic approach of methods in order to come up with the closest approximation of how events might play out. All this time spent seeing the future would take away from time living in the present, so to be all-knowing in the Harry Potter universe, you would have to spend all your time looking into the future without actually being able to live a normal life. In no way should she be expected to know every single event that will play out.

While this analysis has been built around the premise that Trelawney is a better prognosticator than she is given credit for, I can’t say with any meaningful surety that she has the Inner Eye, or if such a thing even exists. It is established that her great-great-grandmother, Seer Cassandra Trelawney, had the Sight but even here I would hesitate to say that she was all-knowing about the events of the future and that her predictions came true with 100% accuracy given what we know about the Hall of Prophecy. Trelawney is unfairly held to impossibly high standards, while her track record of prophecies, predictions and other prognostications creates a more positive picture.

I vigorously dispute the allegation that my conduct as GM was in any way my own fault nor should I take any responsibility for anything aside from the good decisions.

Transaction log courtesy of The Athletic.

June 23, 2016: Sixers draft Ben Simmons (1st overall), Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot (24th), Furkan Korkmaz (26th)

Simmons: A+

Ben’s agent stated that Ben would not have come to Philly if Sam was still there. This is now Ben’s team.

Luwawu-Cabarrot: Not My Fault

Not my fault he hasn’t improved his shot or bulked up.

Korkmaz: Not My Fault

Not my fault he came over too early and got injured.

July 2016: Sixers sign Sergio Rodriguez, Gerald Henderson, and Jerryd Bayless

Rodriguez: Not My Fault

Not my fault he was bad at basketball.

Henderson: Not My Fault

Not my fault he was bad at basketball.

Bayless: Not My Fault

Not my fault he got injured.

November 1, 2016: Traded Jerami Grant to the Oklahoma City Thunder for Ersan Ilyasova and a 2020 1st-round draft pick. (2020 1st-round pick is Top-20 protected & turns into 2022 & 2023 2nd-round picks if not conveyed. The Sixers later traded this pick to Orlando in exchange for the rights to Anzejs Pasecniks)

A+

I have worked hard over the last two years to build a foundation for what I hope will soon be many championship seasons for the 76ers.

February 23, 2017: Traded Nerlens Noel to the Dallas Mavericks for Justin Anderson, Andrew Bogut, a 2017 2nd-round draft pick (Jawun Evans was later selected) and a 2020 2nd-round draft pick. 

Not My Fault:

Not my fault that Hinkie saddled me with too many Centers. Noel is a selfish punk.

June 19, 2017: Traded a 2017 1st-round draft pick (Jayson Tatum was later selected) and a future 1st-round draft pick to the Boston Celtics for a 2017 1st-round draft pick (Markelle Fultz was later selected). (Sixers will owe the Kings’ 2019 first-round pick, unless it is number one overall.)

Not My Fault:

Not my fault Fultz’s mentor/father figure made him shoot from a chair/while on his back on the floor. Not my fault about his state of mind and trauma in his family.

June 22, 2017: Sixers select Jonah Bolden (36th), Jawun Evans (39th), Sterling Brown (46th), Matthias Lessort (50th), and trade for Anzejs Pasecniks (25th). 

Bolden: Not My Fault But A+ If He’s Good

Not my fault that Hinkie saddled me with too many young players and picks that I had to stash players overseas. Also if he’s a good player then this changes to an A+.

Pasecniks: Not My Fault But A+ If He’s Good

Not my fault that Hinkie saddled me with too many young players and picks that I had to stash players overseas. Also if he’s a good player then this changes to an A+.

July 8, 2017: Sixers sign J.J. Redick and Amir Johnson

Redick: A+

Used my relationship skills and savvy to lure Redick with a 1yr – $23mn contract.

Johnson: A+

Used my relationship skills and savvy to lure Johnson with a 1yr – $11mn contract.

October 10, 2017: Sixers sign Joel Embiid to five-year, $148 million contract extension

A+ But Not My Fault If He Gets Injured:

Used my relationship skills to give him a max deal. If he gets hurt again its not my fault because I put language into the contract to protect myself. Not my fault he likes to be shirtless, not my fault he’s selfish and not my fault that he injured his knee and didn’t tell anyone about it.  

December 7, 2017: Sixers trade Jahlil Okafor, Nik Stauskas and a 2018 2nd-round draft pick to the Brooklyn Nets for Trevor Booker.

Not My Fault

Not my fault that Hinkie saddled me with too many Centers. Not my fault Jah didn’t pass a physical.

February 2018: Sixers sign Marco Belinelli and Ersan Ilyasova

Belinelli: A+

Used my relationship skills and savvy to lure Belinelli after he was cut from another team.

Ilyasova: A+

Used my relationship skills and savvy to lure Ilyasova after he was cut from another team. Bry Bry the Relationship Guy strikes again.

The Verdict

A+/Not My Fault.

Everything that went well was entirely my doing.

Everything that went wrong was not my fault because the player got hurt, were being selfish or Hinkie’s mess that I had to clean up.

Who wants to hire me next?

First order of business, Martin ended up victorious in our season Over/Unders, prevailing over me in a 18 to 16 win. He should be less proud about picking Cleveland to go over 4.5 wins and took the Under (7.5 wins) on his beloved Saints but came through with savvy Overs on Buffalo and Carolina and an Under on Seattle. I had a straight up nightmare, though I went Over on the Eagles (8.5 wins) and that’s all that really matters at the end of the day.

Dumbledore is a bad, bordering on terrible, headmaster of Hogwarts. This is not the Draco and Lucius Malfoy line of reasoning that he’s the worst headmaster because he’s a ‘muggle lover’ and lets too many of them into the school. He’s also clearly not a bad person or a terrible wizard, he’s the best and obviously plays a crucial role in defeating Voldemort. I just don’t believe he should be doing the job of headmaster.

My argument for this is based on three main principles:

• Negligence
• Poor hiring decisions
• What does he actually do?

Negligence

By negligence, we can also expand this to include a lot of unnecessary risk-taking.  This mostly crops up in the first two books, allowing Harry to put his life at risk in order to save the school on multiple occasions. We are told early on in book 1 that, “Gringotts is the safest place in the world fer anything yeh want ter keep safe — ‘cept maybe Hogwarts.” Except maybe Hogwarts. In reality, Gringotts is safer than Hogwarts but by storing a dangerous and much desired item in a school for 11-18 year olds, you are actually attracting unsavoury characters to try to steal it, putting children at risk. Of course, the reason they move the stone is because there is an attempted break-in at Gringotts but wouldn’t it make more sense to move it to a heavily guarded or better protected vault in the Bank?  Quirrell is backed by a weak Voldemort and to me, there isn’t any real indication that he could have broken into vault 713. The vault was very deep in the bank and required a goblin to stroke the door with his finger in order to gain entry. Having a powerless Voldemort in the back of his head wouldn’t have made much difference in my view, meaning that we’re looking at just a regular wizard trying to steal from the Bank, presumably something that Gringotts security has procedures in place to handle. By placing the stone in Hogwarts, Dumbledore is inviting danger to the school.

Following up from this, he seemingly suspects that Quirrell is bad news, and yet does very little about it. When he says to Snape, “Keep an eye on Quirrell, won’t you?” this tells us that he’s aware that everything is not quite what it seems with the stammering schoolmaster, and yet he’s content to let him teach 12 year old children in close proximity. If he suspected something at the beginning, the troll at Hallowe’en should have been the clear warning. As readers, we are nudged to believe that Snape is the bad guy but we are kept in the dark about things until the end, while Dumbledore is aware of these factors and is unable to piece 2 + 2 together. A troll breaks into the dungeon at Hallowe’en. Quirrell’s speciality is trolls and there is no way that Dumbledore would not know this. Presumably Quirrell’s work history or education experience would have listed his talents with trolls, maybe a PhD in Troll Studies or Troll Relations and then, HE PUT A TROLL IN THE GAUNTLET TO GET TO THE STONE (side note, what does this troll live off for a year?). Come on man, figure it out.

Finally, this is all compounded by his decision to let Harry take on Quirrell and Voldemort at the age of 11 years old. “It’s almost like he thought I had the right to face Voldemort if I could….” – this is great that it all worked out for everyone. However, in a different scenario, Quirrell decides not to physically attack Harry for no reason and instead use his wand to simply kill him. Then Dumbledore would have to deal with some very real questions from the Daily Prophet and the Ministry of Magic regarding the death of a young boy on his watch as he allowed events to play out.

After what can only be described as a bad job in Book 1, he contrives to be even worse in Book 2. Again, an issue of negligence that he allows the school to suffer through multiple attacks on students without really considering closing down or postponing school. He was a teacher at the school 50 years ago when the Chamber of Secrets was initially opened that led to the death of a student (Moaning Myrtle). He should have been on high alert when Mrs. Norris was attacked and a message daubed on the wall warning “enemies of the heir”. Instead, he sits back and watches as more students are hospitalised; Colin Creevey, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Hermione Granger and Penelope Clearwater. Mercifully, there are no “killins” and he is removed from his post by the governors. Why not consider closing the school after the first, second or third attacks? What is he doing to prevent these attacks? Again, he knows that Myrtle is the one who died 50 years ago, surely his first port of call would be to ask her how and where she died and work backwards from there. Granted, he wouldn’t have been able to access the Chamber without speaking parseltongue, however, once Harry emerged as one during the Duelling Club, he should have frogmarched him to the bathroom to bust the case wide open. Similarly, there’s implications in the first book that he knows “just about everything that goes in this school” and yet doesn’t piece together the fact that Ginny is the one opening the Chamber. Perhaps he could have hung out invisibly in the bathroom to see who opens it. Basically, he could have taken any number of actions but doesn’t, instead, hiding in his tower and allowing a basilik to slither around his school.

At the end of the book, exams are cancelled as a school treat. A school treat! Its McGonagall who announces it but obviously such a big decision would have to be approved at the highest level, aka Dumbledore. The whole purpose of keeping the school open was presumably to ensure that students were educated, then he cancels the exams! What kind of system is this? His top priority is education and yet he fails to live up to this by not holding exams to ensure that the students have actually learned anything over the past year.

Poor Hiring Decisions

Out of all the teachers we’re exposed to during the 6 books (not including Deathly Hallows since he’s dead by then), which ones are actually good? The 4 heads of Houses seem to know what they’re doing, Professor Vector gets high marks and maybe Horace Slughorn and Remus Lupin are also competent. Dumbledore hires 5 Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers (Umbridge is appointed), of which 2 of them are Death Eaters/servants of Lord Voldemort in disguise! That’s 40% of his DADA hires! Another is a werewolf who goes rampaging on school grounds and we also have perhaps the worst teacher of them all, Gilderoy Lockhart.

His only good DADA hire is basically appointing Snape, who aside from being an asshole, seems like he gets results as a teacher. I don’t even give Dumbledore credit for hiring Slughorn since he was hired originally by previous headmaster Armando Dippet, so it’s not as if he pored over CVs, cover letters and interviews to find a suitable Potions master. Sybil Trelawney is also objectively a bad teacher but you can partly attribute that to Divination not being a real subject and the definite need to keep her in-house. Worth mentioning that she progressively turns into an alcoholic over books 5 and 6 and Dumbledore doesn’t step in and send her to Witches Alcoholic Anonymous. I’d be pretty concerned if my child was being taught by an alcoholic who openly drinks during the day. Appointing Firenze was perhaps a step in the right direction but its unclear whether he’s really a top notch hire since the subject doesn’t lend itself to learning.

Among his most egregious hiring decisions is that of Hagrid, who even the main trio can barely defend as a good teacher. Setting aside the fact that he’s not even a qualified wizard, there is evidence early on in books 3 and 4 that he is not up to the job. Why not just give him tips and advice, maybe sit in on a class and give him feedback? Nah, just let him flounder instead, put the lives of children at risk from dangerous creatures and not suitably educate them, much better idea. I also quibble with the fact that Hagrid immediately becomes ‘Professor Hagrid’ once appointed to the Care of Magical Creatures post. What has he done exactly to earn that honorific? Again, he didn’t even make it through high school, let alone take higher education or a teacher training course. In the muggle world, it takes a PhD and years of experience as a Lecturer, Reader and Senior Lecturer to become a Professor but in the magical world, Professorships are thrown about willy-nilly. It is immediately apparent to the students and Umbridge that substitute teacher Professor Grubbly-Plank is a better teacher than Hagrid and yet he is foisted on them for the duration of the books.

What Does He Actually Do?

So if he’s negligent during crises, making poor hiring decisions and not even teaching Harry Occlumency in book 5, what does he actually do every day?

I’m not a headmaster so I can’t quite attest to their responsibilities but my assumption would be a combination of; a bunch of admin/general management, helping with the syllabus and ensuring teachers are performing at the highest possible level. We can only assume that he’s spending his time working on some real painstaking admin work basically every day of the school year. By Book 6, he’s spending most of his time trying to research into the personal history of Lord Voldemort. Seems like a massive overstepping of his role as an educator. Are the public, current parents and alumni paying his salary to not do his job and/or fund his trips across the UK to hunt down Horcruxes? Fiscally irresponsible and misallocation of funds.

Importantly, he seems to have very little role in setting a syllabus for the students, giving wide latitude to his (unqualified) teaching staff to teach whatever they want. The results of this include Gilderoy Lockhart simply reading his books to the class, Hagrid introducing children to an illegal breed of creature that has no further application in the world and Mad-Eye Moody USING UNFORGIVEABLE CURSES ON 14 YEAR OLDS. It starts at the top and he displays no interest in ensuring the students are leaving the school as qualified witches and wizards.

A crazy idea I had at the end of the series, is that maybe Dumbledore should fill the constantly vacant DADA position with the guy who defeated the previous greatest dark wizard of all time prior to Voldemort. Grindelwald is largely regarded as such and presumably took prodigious skill in order to defeat him, perhaps Dumbledore could pass down some of this wisdom to the students of Hogwarts. Failing that, our headmaster at school would jump in and help out with a class. Dumbledore does no such thing, not even subbing for Lupin when he goes out with a case of werewolfitis. Maybe after many decades as a Transfiguration professor, he has checked out mentally, preferring to delegate and basically just coasting on his fame for the rest of his career. When it comes to protecting the lives of his students, his gross negligences means that ‘checking out’ makes him quite simply, a “barmy old codger” who is not up to the task of headmaster of Hogwarts.