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August 12, 2020 
By DYLAN BYERS in Los Angeles & AHIZA GARCÍA-HODGES in San Francisco Good morning. 🇺🇸 It's Kamala! As NYT's Jonathan Martin and Astead Hendon write, Joe Biden's selection of the California Senator is at once a "groundbreaking decision" and a "conventional choice."
• Fun fact: Among her many "firsts," Harris is the first person from California or any state west of the Rockies to appear on a Democratic presidential ticket.
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Tom Williams/Getty 🇺🇸 Moving the Market Kamala Harris takes Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Wall Street
Joe Biden's decision to tap Sen. Kamala Harris of California as his running mate has won overwhelming praise in all corners of the Market, from Silicon Valley to Hollywood to Wall Street. The early praise signals a fast tide of political donations in the days ahead.
• The big picture: Harris, the first Black woman and the first person of Indian descent to be nominated by a major party, has injected enthusiasm into a campaign that had struggled to inspire enthusiasm among many big Democratic donors.
• Her ties with business leaders in tech and entertainment will be a boon to Biden — especially in Silicon Valley, where the big tech firms that are under antitrust scrutiny will be glad to support a ticket that has no ambitions to break up big tech.
Big in the Bay: "Biden’s selection of Harris, who has glad-handed with San Francisco elites for decades ... is likely to usher in Silicon Valley excitement and money galore in a way that other running mates would not," Recode's Teddy Schleifer reports.
• The selection also "offers some reassurance to the tech industry." Harris is "a policy pragmatist who enjoys close relationships with many leading tech executives," and, like Biden, she is not someone who has shown a strong desire to punish the tech giants.
• Sheryl Sandberg, who has been mostly silent on 2020 politics, wrote a lengthy Instagram post yesterday celebrating Harris' selection as "a huge moment for Black women and girls all over the world." Laurene Powell Jobs was quick to express her support as well.
Talk of Tinseltown: "The news ... hit Hollywood with a jolt," Variety's Gene Maddaus reports. "Harris has long-standing connections to the industry ... [and] her husband, Douglas Emhoff, is an entertainment lawyer at DLA Piper in Century City."
• "Biden also has strong ties to the business. ... But Harris — a veteran of the high-dollar donor circuit — can be expected to take on a special responsibility to raise money in Hollywood in the closing months of the campaign."
• Damon Lindelof, the creator of HBO’s "Watchmen," and ICM Partners CEO Chris Silbermann have both hosted fundraisers for Harris in the past and were among those who effusively praised Biden's selection of Harris.
Big on the Street: "Wall Street leaders ... cheered Joe Biden’s selection," CNBC's Brian Schwartz reports. "Finance executives, confident the ticket has what it takes to topple Trump, raved about her experience in government, as well as her fundraising prowess."
• "'I think it’s great,' said Marc Lasry, the CEO of investment firm Avenue Capital Group. 'She’s going to help Joe immensely ...' Lasry is also a part owner of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks."
• "Financial advisory firm Signum Global is already telling its clients that the choice of Harris reinforces the notion that the Democratic ticket is more moderate than progressive."
What's next: The fundraising circuit. Among other events, Schleifer reports that Harris will headline "a high-dollar fundraiser with a Bay Area fundraising group, Electing Women Bay Area," in a few days.
Brett Carlsen/Getty 🏈 Talk of TV Land College football is collapsing. What's next for ESPN?
The Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences have officially postponed their 2020 seasons because of the coronavirus pandemic, a major blow to the entire sports-media ecosystem that could push college football to a total shutdown for the year.
• The big picture: The prospect of a fall without college football is now becoming more likely, with major implications for the game's media partners. ESPN could lose $750 million in ad dollars alone if the season were canceled outright.
• That would also be yet another setback for Disney, which has seen nearly every aspect of its business suffer as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Last week, the media giant reported a net loss of $4.72 billion in the third quarter.
"It's a brutal loss," Jim Miller, the investigative journalist who has written extensively about ESPN, told us last night. "I was speaking to people at ESPN ... and this one is really hurting. College football is a big part of ESPN's DNA reaching back a longtime."
• "ESPN has spent over $20 billion on college football in less than a decade," he said. "They're losing not only advertising money, but also eyeballs that you count on to justify the cable bundle." (As we noted yesterday, pay TV subscriptions have been declining for a decade.)
The latest: The Big Ten and the Pac-12 both say they hope to play their fall sports in the spring, "if the nation's struggle against the coronavirus is in a better place," our colleague David Li reports.
• The ACC and SEC have not changed their plans and say they will continue to make decisions based on the advice of their medical advisory groups and local and state health guidelines.
• The Big 12, which was said to be split on its decision, decided last night to "continue moving forward with the intent of playing fall football," ESPN's Sam Khan Jr. reports.
• Outside the Power 5, the Ivy League, Mid-American Conference and Mountain West Conference have also canceled their seasons.
• Even Major League Baseball, which long resisted using a bubble, is rumored to be considering one for the postseason after coronavirus outbreaks affected three teams, LAT’s Bill Shaikin reports.
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