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Review: In ‘KPOP,’ Korean Pop and Broadway Meet (Too) Cute

by SITKI KOVALI
written by SITKI KOVALI

“A lot of people come to these things and they don’t even understand the language,” says Harry, a filmmaker who passes for the villain in the noisy yet skimpy new musical “KPOP.” “So what are they watching for?”

Good question.

For the record, the answer provided by Tiny, a member of a Korean pop group called RTMIS, is delivered, unlike a lot of the show, in English: “Perfection, Mr. Harry. OK?”

And it’s true that if you enjoy the precision-drilled dancing, meticulous melisma and auto-tuned sentiments that have turned K-pop into a worldwide sensation over the past 10 years, you are likely to be among those cheering the musical’s Broadway incarnation, which opened on Sunday at Circle in the Square.

But those who aren’t hard-core fans of the genre or don’t understand Korean — let alone those who saw the radically different and far superior Off Broadway version in 2017 — will have a harder time enjoying this one. For them, the musical is less an eye-opener than an ear-pounder, assiduously drowning out any ambitions it may once have had to be more.

It can’t be lost on the creative team that in adapting their Off Broadway hit for a bigger and more conventional audience they courted the same fate as their fictional counterparts. Both then and now, the book of “KPOP,” by Jason Kim, concerns the efforts of a Seoul hit factory to push its stable of custom-groomed artists into crossover success in the United States. To do so, they are willing to sacrifice almost anything.

That theme was given edgy, immersive expression in Teddy Bergman’s 2017 staging, produced by the experimental theater incubator Ars Nova in association with Ma-Yi Theater Company and Woodshed Collective. It imagined the audience as members of an itinerant focus group who, serving as emissaries of American taste, were led in small packs from space to space and given glimpses of what those sacrifices might mean.

If some seemed silly, others were trenchant; an especially disturbing encounter involved a plastic surgeon. But by the time everyone assembled in one last room for a concert-cum-party, the giddy fun of the bubble-gummy songs (by Helen Park and Max Vernon) felt earned — even if the reversal was dramatically perplexing. Were we now celebrating what the rest of the show had encouraged us to disparage?

That problem remains, with new ones added. To begin with, Bergman, directing again, faced an overwhelming difficulty in the fact that no Broadway theater could accommodate the immersive concept. Gabriel Hainer Evansohn’s set provides a partial solution: Instead of the audience moving, a tongue-shaped stage does, sliding back and forth bearing performers. And video screens mounted everywhere (Peter Nigrini is the projection designer) allow us to eavesdrop on the backstage action captured when Harry the filmmaker (Aubie Merrylees) goes rogue.

Instead of the audience moving, a tongue-shaped stage does, sliding back and forth with the performers. Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

The narrative frame was rebuilt less successfully. The audience, no longer a focus group, merely watches as a K-pop impresario named Ruby (Jully Lee) prepares for a concert that will introduce her stable of acts to America. There are three of them: the five-woman RTMIS (pronounced Artemis), the eight-man F8 (pronounced fate) and the solo diva MwE (pronounced mu-WEE) — an orphan Ruby has raised, Mama Rose-style, for stardom.

MwE (played by the actual K-pop star Luna) has been reconfigured entirely. Her problem is no longer that she is aging out of pop credibility but that she wants creative freedom and a normal life with her boyfriend (Jinwoo Jung). Ruby ruthlessly tries to quash those dangerous ideas — love and creativity are not things a K-pop star can afford, she says — even as she complains about MwE’s failure to perform from the heart.

This is familiar material, thinly delivered, and so is the dissatisfaction of the members of RTMIS, which is so vague and hastily resolved I barely caught what it was. Only among the members of F8 does the conflict feel fresh and worthy of exploration in song: Its seven longtime members resent the “new kid,” Brad, brought in to juice their American rollout. Biracial and Connecticut-raised, Brad (Zachary Noah Piser) is seen by the others as inauthentic; he isn’t even fluent in Korean.

The songs, unfortunately, do not take up the challenge of investigating that issue, or any other. They are all diegetic — actual numbers performed by the characters — and are thus connected to the story, as in a jukebox musical, by only the feeblest of threads. When Brad tells the filmmaker that he grew up neither Korean enough for some nor American enough for others, and proceeds to sing a song called “Halfway,” we may expect an exploration of those feelings. But no, it’s a love ballad, addressed to a girl: “Can you meet me halfway, baby?”

The same problem derails “Korean Man,” a song for F8 that you may think from the setup will express their assertion of national pride. As we learn from the parts of it that are performed in English, though, it’s mostly about having the “baddest swagger” and “bein’ a bad, bad boy.”

Jully Lee, left, plays a K-pop impresario named Ruby, and the real-life K-pop star Luna plays MwE.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

With their link to the drama severed, and the drama in any case attenuated, the songs cease to function as they normally do in musical theater and collapse into a concert. That’s true even before the final 20 minutes of the show, when the filmmaker plot is summarily abandoned and, with it, any pretense of plot.

So that flashback scene in which Ruby tells MwE, at 13, that she’s a “disaster” with “tree trunk legs,” and a choreographer shouts that she’s shaming her parents? Forget about it. Come hear the band. (Actually, there are only three instrumentalists.)

By then, if you are not a fan, you may feel worn out by the aggressive mimicry of the K-pop performance style, not just in the mostly electronic arrangements but also in the minutely detailed choreography by Jennifer Weber, the squint-inducing lighting by Jiyoun Chang and the hundreds of can-you-top-this costumes by Clint Ramos and Sophia Choi. In that environment it’s hard to say whether Brad’s “Halfway” and MwE’s “Mute Bird” — acoustic songs simply staged and feelingly delivered — are actually lovely or merely a relief.

In its remaking for Broadway I wish “KPOP” had preserved more moments like that: moments that allow you to consider what the excitement of K-pop (for those who feel it) and the expressiveness of American musical theater (likewise) can profitably say to each other. Both have their fans and no doubt their glories, as well as their limitations. But it seems to me that in introducing the two, a good place to have met would have been, well, halfway. “KPOP” still has far to go to get there.

KPOP
At Circle in the Square, Manhattan; kpopbroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes.

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Business

Giant Wind Farms Arise Off Scotland, Easing the Pain of Oil’s Decline

by SITKI KOVALI
written by SITKI KOVALI

The pilot of the nearly 80-foot work boat gunned its powerful engines, pinning the bow against the base of a towering wind turbine in the smooth North Sea. Three men in yellow and orange outfits steppedonto metal rungs and started slowly scaling the nearly 300-foot structure, past the huge blades that help send electricity to Scotland.

It was a regular workday for these employees and contractors of a Scottish utility, SSE, and its partners, which operate the vast Beatrice wind farm off the northern tip of Great Britain.

Their job is to go from turbine to turbine — Beatrice has 84 arrayed over 50 square miles of blue water — performing maintenance of the powerful machines. Teams can usually service two or three in a day.

It’s grueling work — up to 12 hours a day on the water — but it has its rewards. David Larter, one of the men who climbed the tower, showed a video he had made on his phone while eating lunch one day from a perch high above the North Sea: a minke whale, gently rolling through the water below the tower. “We were quite lucky that day,” he said.

Like other people around Wick, a former fishing port where the wind farm’s operations are based, Mr. Larter also considers himself fortunate to have signed onto a business that is growing as Europe seeks to replace oil and gas, whose production has been a mainstay of this part of Scotland, with cleaner energy.

“This industry is the future, isn’t it,” he said.

Jobs at the wind farm can require up to 12 hours a day on the water.

Beatrice has 84 turbines over 50 square miles of the North Sea.

Skills from oil and gas fields are also valued on wind farms.

Across the globe, governments and developers are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into large offshore wind farms like Beatrice to meet climate-change goals.

These initiatives are attractive to investors and lawmakers because they produce enormous amounts of clean energy and can be placed far enough from shore that they are largely out of sight. Britain is already generating more than 10 percent of its electricity from wind at sea, and on same gusty days, like Nov. 2, wind produces more than half. As energy security becomes a critical issue in wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the country aspires to nearly quadruple offshore capacity over the next decade.

Around the Moray Firth, a triangular notch of the North Sea off Wick, there is abundant evidence of cleaner energy replacing fossil fuels. The Beatrice wind farm takes its name from a nearby offshore oil field that was depleted and will be gradually dismantled. (The oil field was named for a wife of T. Boone Pickens, the American oilman, whose company developed Beatrice.)

Just to the southwest is another port, Nigg, where Global Energy Group recently spent 120 million pounds (about $137 million) beefing up the docks so it can load the enormous components for offshore wind turbines onto ships.

Although tight supplies of natural gas have caused electricity bills to soar over the past year, skepticism about the future of fossil fuels remains strong in Britain and much of Europe, and the numbers tell a story of decline. After reaching a peak in 2014, investment in oil and gas in Britain plummeted by about three-quarters to around £3.7 billion last year, according to Offshore Energies UK, an industry group. Jobs supported by the business have fallen by more than half over roughly a decade, to around 200,000.

The harbor at Wick, in northern Scotland.Credit…Francesca Jones for The New York Times
Wick was a thriving herring port in the 19th century.
A shopping area in Wick, a town of about 7,000.

Offshore wind farms like Beatrice are making up some of the difference. Investments in these facilities last year was £6.7 billion, roughly double those for oil and gas. Even as companies that make turbines are experiencing financial pain because of supply chain bottlenecks, the offshore wind industry is booming. Jobs in building and maintaining offshore wind farms, and at their suppliers, increased about 16 percent last year to 31,000, with about a third of them in Scotland, according to the Offshore Wind Industry Council.

The marine wind industry, while growing fast, is still in its infancy, and produces only a small fraction of the energy content of the oil and gas extracted from the British North Sea. And because of the greater ability to automate the operation of maritime facilities, it is uncertain if they will fully replace the declining number of jobs in oil and gas.

Still, the changes underway in this region of Scotland could mean there is still a future for the people who work in oil and gas and the communities that depend on it.

A group of turbine stands in Nigg, a port southwest of Wick.
The Beatrice wind farm supports about 70 jobs.

Many people who honed their skills on the offshore oil platforms that dot the waters off Scotland find it relatively easily to switch to the wind industry. “What we have got is a very ambidextrous community that will turn their hand to anything that needs doing,” said Willie Watt, a retired oil services executive and former chairman of the Wick Harbour Authority board.

Among those who made the switch is Alan Paul, a Wick native who spent 28 years in the oil business and now manages Beatrice’s control room at the harbor’s edge. It is where technicians monitor activities out at the turbines, using cameras mounted on equipment and checking the giant machines’ performance on screens.

Eight of the nine operators have backgrounds in petroleum, Mr. Paul, 54, said. (Beatrice supports about 70 jobs, while around 1,400 people at SSE, the parent company, work in wind energy.)

“The skills are very, very transferable,” he said.

Part of what drew Mr. Paul to wind was a desire to escape the need to spend weeks away from home, missing weddings and holidays. He said those strains, part of an offshore worker’s life, had contributed to the collapse of his first marriage. He has since remarried.

“It meant I could have my own home every night,” he said of joining Beatrice in 2017.

Completed in 2019, Beatrice’s turbines can churn out enough electricity to power more than 400,000 homes, the equivalent of about one-sixth of Scotland’s total.

Beatrice’s operating profit last fiscal year was 218 million pounds.CreditCredit…Francesca Jones for The New York Times

Beatrice also makes a load of money. In the year that ended on March 31, it recorded an operating profit of £218 million on total revenues of £393 million — or about £1 of operating profit for every £2 of revenue.

The presence of such an outsize business has been a boon to Wick, a town of about 7,000 people whose heyday was more than a century ago, when small fishing craft blanketed its port. Beatrice has paid to clean up the harbor area, including £20 million to renovate two stone buildings to use for the control center and building docks for the boats that go out to the farm. Beatrice’s owners have also provided £6 million for local improvements like new lights around the harbor and wheelchairs for a beach.

“It’s really been quite a boost in terms of regeneration in the whole town,” said Raymond Bremner, the leader of the local Highland Council.

Beatrice, which cost £2.5 billion to build, was Scotland’s first monster wind farm, and it helped open the way for even larger installations, some of them budgeted to cost four times as much, or more.

At Nigg, cranes are loading yellow-painted turbine stands, called jackets, onto ships. (These stands were not made in Britain, but in China and other locations; British companies say they would like to make these parts locally but will need to become more competitive on costs.) The equipment is destined for Seagreen, a £3 billion wind farm being built by SSE and TotalEnergies, the French giant. It will have nearly twice the generating capacity of Beatrice.

In an interview, Alistair Phillips-Davies, SSE’s chief executive, said that as they completed wind farms the company’s development teams moved on to the next ones. “It is a good business for us — yeah, we are making good returns,” he said.

Britain’s recently announced 45 percent windfall tax aimed at clawing back profits from soaring electricity prices isn’t likely to affect Beatrice because, like many recently built wind farms, it operates under a subsidy scheme that already caps revenues.

Turbine stands awaiting deployment at Nigg.
The giant turbine stands were mostly built in China and shipped to Scotland.
An oil storage vessel that is being reconfigured so it can be powered by a floating wind turbine.

But Mr. Phillips-Davies told the BBC recently that the tax would reduce the funds that SSE had available to invest and that the government should take care not to undermine Britain’s wind boom.

“We spent a decade-plus building one of the best places to invest in green energy, and we need to make sure we keep it that way,” he said.

Despite the tax, the offshore wind industry seems destined to grow rapidly to meet the demands created by the government’s plans to replace gasoline- and diesel-powered cars with electric models, and natural gas heating with electric or hydrogen appliances.

The Crown Estate Scotland, for instance, awarded swaths of seabed covering 2,700 square miles for wind leases this year to a variety of companies, including SSE, BP and Shell. Analysts estimate that total investment in these projects, collectively known as Scotwind, could exceed $100 billion.

BP alone anticipates that its plans for offshore wind may support around 300 jobs at the company, helping it maintain a sizable presence in Scotland, where it now has about 900 employees. Richard Haydock, an oil industry veteran who now heads BP’s Scotwind program, said about half of new hires for wind would come from jobs in fossil fuel. Maintaining the large wind farm that the company plans to build will require staffing “fairly comparable” to an offshore oil field, he said.

But the cozy, stay-at-home atmosphere that drew Mr. Paul to Beatrice may not always be possible for people working on some of the next wind farms, which will be much farther out to sea.

Technicians will probably live on vessels stationed at the wind farms for two weeks and then swap with fresh teams. “It will be very similar to the pattern and lifestyle” of workers on offshore drilling rigs, Mr. Haydock said.

Alan Paul, a Wick native who spent 28 years in the oil business, now helps manage Beatrice’s control room.
A boat carrying technicians to the wind farm.
The control room of the Scottish utility SSE in Wick.
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Business

These Young Workers Are ‘Romanticizing’ the Return to Office

by SITKI KOVALI
written by SITKI KOVALI

Meena Kirupakaran didn’t think there was anything especially exciting about her job in publishing. She had an hourlong commute each way, including a 40-minute train ride. The HarperCollins Canada office in Toronto, where she worked as a marketing coordinator, didn’t have cold brew on tap or free lunches.

But when she took some shots of the downtown area around her building, the views from her floor and the shelves of books decorating the space and edited them into a TikTok video — adding gentle music — she started to see her job, and office life in general, in a new way. So did her viewers. Overnight, the video, which she posted in August, was watched more than 100,000 times, Ms. Kirupakaran said, and it has since accumulated a couple of hundred thousand more views.

“People in the comments were like, ‘Manifesting this,’” Ms. Kirupakaran, 23, said. “And I was like, this is literally me taking snapshots of what I do at work.”

Well, sort of. It was work, romanticized. That is: Ms. Kirupakaran was arranging scenes from her everyday routine that made office life seem tranquil and inviting. Even a train ride into the city, which she showed in a later video, could be made to seem more pleasant with “Dreams” by the Cranberries as the soundtrack.

Meena Kirupakaran, who shows her TikTok followers around her publishing job, said that “there’s something beautiful when you romanticize going into work.”Credit…Brett Gundlock for The New York Times

Ms. Kirupakaran’s viral success sprang from the collision of a few trends: She is a Generation Z office worker, more enamored of the daily grind than some of her older colleagues, in part because the physical office remains a novelty. Ms. Kirupakaran finished college and entered the work force during the pandemic, meaning that, like many of her peers, she had never worked in an office before her job at HarperCollins. And because she’s a TikTok user, her positive perspective on office life gets broadcast onto one of social media’s largest platforms.

Ms. Kirupakaran uses the rubric of a “day in the life” to show her followers around the office and take them to work events. The genre often includes skin care regimens, eating habits or city-specific excursions. TikTokers also make day-in-the-life videos of their work lives, deploying the same editing style and careful curation to cast their office jobs in a more flattering light. As many workers continue to chafe against mandates to return to the office, videos like Ms. Kirupakaran are a stark contrast.

Some are more modest, showing lunches eaten alone in gray cubicles and office coffee whose quality we can guess at, while others flaunt luxe décor and amenities like gyms and catered dining. But the practice of “romanticizing,” which encourages gratitude for the most mundane parts of our lives, means that almost every office job gets the same treatment on TikTok. Across the spectrum, these videos act as positive messaging for companies trying to persuade their employees that it’s worth returning.

On TikTok, “a lot of content creators spread the message: Don’t work in person!” Ms. Kirupakaran said. “But I do think there’s something beautiful when you romanticize going into work.”

Ms. Chen said going into the office had helped her make friends after she moved to San Francisco for her job at Microsoft.Credit…Jason Henry for The New York Times

Alison Chen had some experience going into an office, but that was for internships she had in college before Covid. When she moved a year and a half ago for a new job as a product designer at Microsoft, in a city where she didn’t know anyone, the office helped her make friends, she said.

In May, she posted a video titled “today my office reopened,” taking viewers along with her on her commute and showing her grabbing a coffee, eating a salmon roll with her team and going to an ice cream social and then a happy hour. The video has more than 143,000 views. For comparison, Ms. Chen’s recent “Day in Life: Rainy Day in SF” video has about 2,500 views; most of her videos have between a couple of thousand and 20,000. Ms. Kirupakaran’s non-publishing content on TikTok usually attracts a few thousand views.

“I’ve heard my friends tell me they started coming into the office more after they’ve seen that it’s really fun and pretty productive and you can meet people during the day,” Ms. Chen, 23, said.

One of those friends was Rachitha Tholasi, another 23-year-old who works at Microsoft. Ms. Tholasi didn’t know about Ms. Chen’s day-in-the-life TikToks when they met one day last fall at lunch. Now she is sometimes present when Ms. Chen shoots scenes, and she enjoys seeing her experiences in the office reflected back to her. Over time, their office on Market Street has earned a reputation for having a younger, fun-loving demographic, she said.

“It’s funny because when I first started coming a year ago, there were maybe five people my age coming in,” Ms. Tholasi said. “Now we have to use at least two large lunch tables or even more to fit everyone.”

The office day-in-the-life videos overlap with another corner of the TikTok universe: “CareerTok,” where creators give advice about landing a job in a certain industry or tell viewers how to write a cover letter or edit their résumés. Ms. Chen and other creators attributed the success of their office TikToks to young people’s curiosity about what it’s like to be in the work force and how to choose a career path.

While Ms. Chen’s videos normally get between a couple of thousand and 20,000 views, her return-to-work TikTok has more than 143,000.Credit…Jason Henry for The New York Times

Madeline Edwards, a 24-year-old who has made day-in-the-life videos at two jobs, said that when she was growing up, movies like “The Devil Wears Prada” and “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” were her first impressions of what being an adult with an office job would be like. Those films portrayed either highly specific work environments (Vogue magazine) or highly unrealistic situations that also happened to take place in the world of magazines (trying to get a man to break up with you as an experiment for an article).

Now Ms. Edwards and other TikTokers have the power to influence how young people view corporate life, and the images they create may be skewed in their own ways.

The portrayals are largely positive. Some of the videos that Ms. Edwards made when she worked for Uber have been mistaken for company-sponsored content, she said. Though she identified herself only as “working in tech,” Uber’s logo made cameos. Ms. Edwards said Uber, which did not respond to requests for comment, had no involvement in the videos.

Still, the content can function as free marketing for companies and as recruiting tools, showing potential applicants a kind of highlight reel of what is attractive about these workplaces. While some creators said their co-workers or supervisors were generally aware that they were shooting TikTok videos about their workplaces, they maintained that their employers had no role. Their bosses, they said, weren’t even really on TikTok.

Probably. But many large corporations like Target and Chipotle already use the platform for recruiting. And even if companies aren’t explicitly asking their young employees to spread upbeat messaging about their jobs online, employers know it’s happening and happy to see it proliferate, experts said.

“Companies have seen this trend, and they’re trying to use it,” said Angela Copeland, the head of marketing at Recruiter.com, a platform that companies use to find workers. “People at large companies are aware of what people post about them, and they care because they don’t want people posting negative content.”

At Recruiter, for instance, she and her colleagues have tried to encourage employers who are enthusiastic about the company’s mission to share videos and other content online.

“When I talk to folks, if they seem excited I will absolutely bring it up to them, or if they do it on their own I will encourage them, or ask them how I can help promote the video,” Ms. Copeland said.

(HarperCollins and Microsoft did not return requests for comment.)

A recent TikTok post by Ms. Chen included video of her commute to work.Credit…Jason Henry for The New York Times

The flip side of romanticizing one’s office life is that not everybody finds these portrayals of the 9-to-5 grind convincing. A frequent comment on the videos is that TikTokers seem rarely to be working. Shots of them sitting at their desks are but a blip in a collage of coffee breaks and office events.

The videos can also gloss over working conditions in certain industries that may not be so camera-ready: In the United States, HarperCollins workers are striking for better pay and benefits. And in the past month, tech giants like Meta and Twitter have laid off thousands. Microsoft, where Ms. Chen works, told investors that it would hire fewer people this quarter.

“‘Real’ is a tricky word to use when we’re talking about social media, because even right now with BeReal or this weird, unedited vibe we’re going for on Instagram — it’s still curated, and we still get to choose what we’re showing,” said Ahsia Godfrey, 21, who recently started her first office job as a social media manager at a nonprofit in Dana Point, Calif. Her day-in-the-life videos usually show her waking up early, brushing her teeth, making her bed and then working from her cubicle.

“You can be real and you can be honest, but at the same time it’s like, what’s really the point of what those people are posting?” Ms. Godfrey continued, referring to the videos that focus more on office perks. “I think it’s just to show that they have a really cool workplace.”

TikTokers are still hedging their bets on the office. Many creators who make day-in-the-life videos of office work also use the format to document their days working from home in sweatpants.

Ms. Kirupakaran now works as a freelancer, helping manage book campaigns for publishing companies — primarily remotely at the moment. She said she would probably resume shooting day-in-the-life videos if she started working in an office again.

When she didn’t feel like commuting into her job at HarperCollins, she said, she looked back at her day-in-the-life videos and remembered the “great things about the atmosphere and the job.”

“It helped me on days when I didn’t want to go in,” she said.

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Business Travel’s Rebound Is Being Hit by a Slowing Economy

by SITKI KOVALI
written by SITKI KOVALI

Business travel came back this year more strongly than most industry analysts had predicted in the depths of the pandemic, with domestic travel rebounding by this fall to about two-thirds of the 2019 level.

But in recent weeks, it appears to have hit a new hurdle — companies tightening their spending in a slowing economy.

Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst for Atmosphere Research, said that corporate travel managers have told him in the last few weeks that companies have started to ban nonessential business travel and increase the number of executives needed to approve employee trips. He said he was now predicting that corporate travel would soften slightly for the rest of the year and probably remain tepid into the first quarter of 2023.

Mr. Harteveldt also said his conversations led him to believe that business travel would “come in below the levels airline executives discussed in their third-quarter earnings calls.”

Airlines were bullish on those earnings calls, a little over a month ago. Delta Air Lines, for one, said 90 percent of its corporate accounts “expect their travel to stay the same or increase” in the fourth quarter. United Airlines, too, said its strong third-quarter results suggested “durable trends for air travel demand that are more than fully offsetting any economic headwinds.”

Hotels, too, were optimistic. Christopher J. Nassetta, president and chief executive of Hilton, said on his earnings call that overall occupancy rates had reached more than 73 percent in the third quarter, with business travel showing growing strength.

The change in mood has come as the economy has more visibly slowed. Technology companies, in particular, have been announcing significant layoffs. Housing lenders have also been reducing staff, as rising mortgage rates cut into their business.

The travel industry has long relied on business travel for both its consistency and profitability, with companies often willing to spend more than leisure travelers. When the pandemic almost completely halted business travel in 2020, people were forced to meet via teleconference, and many analysts predicted that the industry would never fully recover.

But business travel did come back. As the economy reopened, companies realized that in-person meetings serve a purpose. In a survey taken in late September by the Global Business Travel Association, a trade group, corporate travel managers estimated that their employers’ business travel volume in their home countries was back up to 63 percent of prepandemic levels, and international business travel was at 50 percent of those levels.

One reason international business travel has not come back as strongly, Mr. Harteveldt said, is that some employers have imposed restrictions on high-priced business-class airline tickets for long-haul flights. He said employers are instead requiring travelers to take a cheaper connecting flight or to fly nonstop in premium economy or regular economy class.

The State of Jobs in the United States

Economists have been surprised by recent strength in the labor market, as the Federal Reserve tries to engineer a slowdown and tame inflation.

  • October Jobs Report: U.S. employers continued to hire at a fast clip, adding 261,000 jobs in the 10th month of the year despite the Fed’s push to cool the economy.
  • A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?: Employees seeking wage increases to cover their costs of living amid rising prices could set off a cycle in which fast inflation today begets fast inflation tomorrow.
  • Disabled Workers: With Covid prompting more employers to consider remote arrangements, employment has soared among adults with disabilities.
  • A Feast or Famine Career: America’s port truck drivers are a nearly-invisible yet crucial part of the global supply chain. And they are sinking into desperation.

“Travelers are telling managers they won’t fly long-haul in economy if they have to go directly to a meeting when they arrive,” Mr. Harteveldt said.

What will business travel look like in the next year?

Pandemic travel restrictions will probably play less of a role. A survey by Tourism Economics, U.S. Travel Association and J.D. Power released in October found that 42 percent of corporate executives had policies in place restricting business travel because of the pandemic, down from 50 percent in the second quarter. Over half expected pandemic-related business travel policies to be re-evaluated in the first half of 2023.

With Americans able to work remotely, many are combining professional and leisure travel, airline and hotel executives said on recent earnings calls. That was a big reason travel did not drop off in September, when the peak vacation period ended, as it used to in years past.

Jan Freitag, national director for hospitality market analytics at CoStar Group, said hotel occupancy by business travelers currently varies by market, with occupancies high in markets like Nashville, Miami and Tampa, Fla. — places where business travelers may well be taking “bleisure” trips. But hotel occupancies by business travelers are low in markets like Minneapolis, San Francisco and Houston.

Mr. Freitag said the lower hotel occupancies in some cities may reflect a lower return-to-office rate in those places, which reduces the ability to have in-person business meetings.

Mr. Freitag said he was “very bullish on group travel, trips for meetings, association events, to build internal culture.” Those trips will recover more quickly, he predicted, than individual business travel.

“It’s all about building relationships,” he said. “It’s very hard to do that online.”

On the other hand, short business meetings and employee training sessions may continue to be conducted online, which is less expensive than in person, said Grant Caplan, president of Procurigence, a consulting firm in Houston that advises companies on their spending for business travel, meetings and events.

Even as business travel has resumed, hotels, airlines and airports still have inadequate staffing. A survey of hoteliers by the American Hotel and Lodging Association, a trade group, released in October found that 87 percent of respondents were experiencing staffing shortages. Although that was an improvement over May, when 97 percent of respondents said they were short-staffed, the current findings do not bode well for smooth hotel stays.

Disruptions in flying, particularly in the United States and Europe — because of weather delays, inadequate flight crews or air traffic control and security issues at airports — have been notoriously high, particularly earlier this year.

Although “we can’t say that these disruptions have discouraged business travel, they have clearly complicated” the experience for travelers, said Kathy Bedell, senior vice president of the Americas and affiliate program for BCD Travel, a travel management company.

Kellie Kessler, a pharmaceutical clinical researcher in Raleigh, N.C., said the travel disruptions she faced this year were too much. She changed jobs recently to take one that requires her to travel on business 10 percent of the time, compared with 80 percent in her previous position.

“The reason I took a nontravel position is that I can count on one hand the number of on-time flights I had this year,” she said.

Trey Thriffiley, chief executive of QIS Aviation Group in Savannah, Ga., said he used to be loyal to particular airlines but flight disruptions have changed that.Credit…Adam Riding for The New York Times

And flight disruptions have led to a decline in some road warriors’ loyalty to airlines, even those who have accrued elite status in the carriers’ frequent-flier programs.

“The disruptions overall have caused me to be less loyal to any one airline,” said Trey Thriffiley, chief executive of QIS Aviation Group a consulting company in Savannah, Ga., that advises individuals and companies about their use of private jets. He is also an elite member of the loyalty programs at Delta, United and American Airlines. “Instead of searching by preferred airline or even cheapest price,” he said, “I search for direct flights or connecting flights to cities closest to where I live that I can drive home from if I need to.”

Airlines’ bullish forecasts notwithstanding, some experts find prospects for business travel this fall and next year extremely murky.

They say they cannot accurately predict how strong business travel will be and what airfares and hotel room rates will look like because of many unknowns, including the duration of the war in Ukraine and its impact on the European and global economies; increasing gasoline and jet fuel prices; and rising inflation, recession fears and political uncertainty.

Mr. Harteveldt, the travel industry analyst, said the recovery of business travel varies by geographic region, with the United States rebounding faster than Europe.

He said the Chinese government could be using its reopening strategy “in a geopolitical way,” adding, “If a country is more friendly, China will grant access to that country’s business and leisure travelers rather than to travelers from countries with which China has greater political differences.”

He predicted that 2023 would be a “difficult year” for business travel unless the war in Ukraine “comes to an abrupt end and there is more certainty about oil and the price of jet fuel.” Also a factor, he said, could be decisions by companies that may have added too much staff during the pandemic to save money by reducing business travel rather than by laying people off.

“If there’s a symbol that can be used to describe the outlook for business travel in 2023, it’s a question mark,” he said. “No airline, travel management company or travel manager can be 100 percent certain what 2023 will bring right now. It’s one of the most confounding, confusing times to be in business travel, perhaps in decades.”

In a report issued in August, Mike Eggleton, director of research and intelligence at BCD Travel, had a similar take on the immediate future for business travel. “Producing a credible travel pricing forecast in the current environment is incredibly difficult,” he wrote. “The near-term travel outlook is more uncertain than ever. Volatility has never been so high and seems likely to persist. There’s vast variation in market performance and outlook.”

Going forward, Ms. Bedell said, perhaps the overriding question about business travel will be whether the trip is necessary.

“Client-facing and revenue-generating travel is taking a priority over internal meetings,” she said.

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Don’t Let a Co-Worker Turn Your Life Upside Down

by SITKI KOVALI
written by SITKI KOVALI

Send questions about the office, money, careers and work-life balance to workfriend@nytimes.com. Include your name and location, or a request to remain anonymous. Letters may be edited.

Hard to Say Goodbye

Your former colleague seems to have a difficult time moving on. We will never know why she’s choosing toxicity when she could just live her life and make the best of her new job. It certainly makes sense to ask her to be more considerate in how she interacts with your colleagues, but I’m not sure she is the kind of person who cares about consideration.

She is being messy because she likes drama, or she’s unhappy and misery loves company. If you’re willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, maybe she thinks she is helping your colleagues by offering them a way out of what she perceives to be a bad job. The best way forward is to focus on the people currently on your team.

In time your former colleague will move on, either because she is happier, or she has found some new drama in which to embroil herself. Rather than try to redirect her negative energy, focus on how you and your remaining colleagues can foster camaraderie and healthier professional relationships as a way forward from all the upheaval. All you can ever really control is your own behavior.

Drawing a Line in the Sand

​

Marketing is one of those fields that is tightly bound with capitalism. I’m not sure there is an ethical, emotionally satisfying way forward that doesn’t involve a big career change. In a capitalist world, we are constantly making ethical compromises while trying to maintain our integrity. Only you can decide what you’re willing to compromise and for how long.

It seems that you’re ready to move on from marketing. You’ve had enough of the collateral damage and this is a good time to start figuring out the way forward. How can you make one of your side gigs more feasible as a career option? What are some other career paths you can consider that are well-compensated but demand less ethical compromise? In the meantime, you don’t really have a reason to apologize. But while you craft your exit strategy, return to work because bills, unfortunately, don’t care about our existential crises. I firmly believe you will find a more tenable way forward and I wish you the very best.

Cubicle Karaoke

Sharing spaces requires a certain amount of patience and flexibility in tolerating the habits of others with a modicum of grace. But being in communal spaces also demands considering the needs of others with some grace, too. It must be nerve-racking to consider saying something to a more senior member of your team, but something has to be said! I love listening to music as much as anyone. In my office, I close the door and play music at an appropriate volume, or I use headphones. This is common sense and good manners. I am guessing his behavior has bothered others but no one else has chosen to say anything.

Just go to his desk and ask him if you can discuss something. Explain that you appreciate his enthusiasm for music, but the way he listens to music and sings along is a distraction. You would really appreciate it if he could wear headphones and resist the urge to sing, though you can certainly understand why he is so inclined to make such joyful noise.

Drawing the Line, Redux

Texas has lax gun laws, with no permits required for people to carry handguns, but people aren’t generally walking around having gunfights. The unfortunate reality is that nowhere is particularly safe these days. From the time I chose this question for the column until I wrote my response, a period of about a week, there have been at least four mass shootings in the United States. It’s a disgrace that this is the status quo. Most conferences have detailed security plans, so visit the conference website to find its policies or reach out to the organizers.

That said, choosing not to go to a state where you are not comfortable with the gun laws is a legitimate choice. If you don’t care about missing the educational component, you’re risking only the loss of networking and other socializing opportunities. Your manager may consider it a strike against you, but if you’re at the end of your career, do you really care?

People and organizations boycott states with laws they deem unacceptable all the time. When North Carolina passed a bill that, among other things, required transgender people to use public bathrooms that aligned with their sex at birth, the N.C.A.A. boycotted and moved tournaments elsewhere. Ringo Starr canceled a concert he was going to perform in the state. Companies reconsidered building offices. Movie producers moved filming locations.

There was an economic impact so significant that the legislation was repealed. Economic consequences can and do work as a tool for activism, but it requires a critical mass of participants. You, as an individual, forgoing this conference won’t immediately move the needle. But you will have taken a moral stand that is meaningful to you, and that does matter. Sometimes, a lot of individual actions will, in time, coalesce into an unstoppable movement.

Write to Roxane Gay at workfriend@nytimes.com.

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How Free Is the Press in the Birthplace of Democracy?

by SITKI KOVALI
written by SITKI KOVALI

On a Saturday morning last November, Stavros Malichudis, a Greek journalist, made a cup of coffee and began scrolling Facebook, where he came across a bombshell exposé by the left-leaning news outlet EFSYN: According to the article, the centralized Greek intelligence service was closely monitoring the activities of people doing work related to refugees, and even tapping their phones. Mr. Malichudis was stunned.

As he read, he noticed that some of the details appeared strangely familiar. A journalist of interest to the intelligence services, the article revealed, had been reporting on a young refugee from Syria imprisoned on the Aegean island of Kos. Mr. Malichudis was in the process of reporting just such a story.

He contacted the EFSYN reporters, who confirmed that the unnamed journalist in the story was, in fact, him. According to their reporting, the Greek National Intelligence Service, or EYP — the equivalent of the Central Intelligence Agency — was monitoring his activities for the news outlet Solomon and had wiretapped his phone. Having secured a two-month surveillance warrant from a prosecutor, authorities were free to listen to any of his personal or professional calls. (Government officials did not respond to a request for comment on the wiretapping.)

“I got really scared,” Mr. Malichudis told us. For months, he was in a precarious emotional place. “When I talked with my mother, with my friends, with my sources, I felt really exposed.” He largely stopped using his phone.

In the year since Mr. Malichudis first read about his own work in another news outlet, the scandal has snowballed. A financial journalist learned he had also been wiretapped. The government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis admitted that the state intelligence service was monitoring an opposition leader. Two government officials, including the prime minister’s nephew, have resigned.

It’s been called the Greek Watergate.

Stavros MalichudisCredit…Angelos Tzortzinis for The New York Times

But allegations of spying are ominous for Greek journalists in a different way: It took a long time for legacy media outlets and the general public to pay much attention.

We have both reported extensively on the forced migration crisis in Greece, Lauren from the United States and Lydia from Greece, where she was raised. But migration is becoming an increasingly dangerous beat. Today, any journalist who covers refugee arrivals to the Aegean Islands or the Evros land border with Turkey risks arrest. Journalists avoid refugee landings, fearing that we, like several humanitarian workers currently on trial, could even be unjustly accused of human trafficking and espionage.

We’ve also watched with growing alarm as Greek officials have outright denied well-sourced reporting and have slammed fellow journalists in news conferences and online. “I won’t accept anyone pointing the finger to this government and accusing it of inhumane behavior,” Mr. Mitsotakis told a Dutch reporter last year — even, it appears, if the accusations are backed up by facts. Since the wiretapping scandal broke, reporters in Greece have become highly vigilant. We’ve had our phones checked for spyware, deleted conversations with sources from our phones for their protection, and now chat exclusively on Signal or in person for fear of being surveilled.

In response to questions about the state of freedom of the press in Greece, a government spokesman and deputy minister to the prime minister, Ioannis Oikonomou, rejected the idea that journalists there were operating in an increasingly repressive climate.

“Democratic values like the rule of law, freedom of speech and transparency are at the very heart of what the government of Greece stands for,” Mr. Oikonomou said. “To suggest otherwise is simply wrong.”

Despite that statement, by external measures the state of the media in Greece is clearly on a downward slope. The surveillance against journalists has caused Greece to drop from 70th to 108th place in the latest Reporters Without Borders press freedom report — the lowest ranking in all of Europe.

Thanasis Koukakis launched a legal case after claiming to have been spied on by state intelligence services using Predator spyware.Credit…Angelos Tzortzinis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Other recent events reflect the dire position of the media in Greece. In April 2021, for instance, the Greek investigative journalist Giorgos Karaivaz, who covered organized crime and policing, was fatally shot in broad daylight outside his home in what police experts later described as a “mafia-like death contract,” and the investigation seems to have indefinitely stalled. In 2022, two Greek journalists discovered makeshift bombs outside their homes, and in early October, the American photojournalist Ryan Thomas was physically attacked by riot police while documenting a demonstration in the Exarcheia neighborhood of Athens, where residents have been protesting new development projects. Last week, Nikos Pilos, a photojournalist, was arrested while covering a police action in that city.

But the spying scandal, and how it unfolded in the public eye, raised a more fundamental question about whether a country known for its beaches and ancient ruins is struggling to uphold the its democratic values.

What happened to the media in Greece? How was even the suggestion of government spying on reporters and opposition leaders met initially with a shrug? For a long time, both ordinary Greeks and those with influence didn’t seem bothered by the government’sspying on journalists, or in much of a hurry to do anything about it.

In the immediate aftermath of the revelations, the reported surveillance of Mr. Malichudis received almost no mention in Greek mainstream media. It was not until months later, when several independent news sites revealed details about the surveillance of another, more established reporter, Thanasis Koukakis, and shortly thereafter the leader of an opposition political party, Nikos Androulakis, that the story spiraled into a scandal worthy of widespread coverage.

Mr. Koukakis, a financial reporter who had written a series of articles scrutinizing the Greek banking sector, said he heard from government sources that he was being monitored by the Greek intelligence service. Soon he discovered something else: His phone had been infected with Predator, a malicious spyware program far more invasive than a wiretap.

Predator was developed by a company called Cytrox, based in North Macedonia, and is sold in Greece by Intellexa, a company with offices in Athens. As Mr. Koukasis learned, it could be used to listen to his calls, read his texts, and even had the capability to monitor his in-person conversations by remotely turning on the microphone or camera on his phone.

Government officials have denied deploying the Predator spyware.

Eliza TriantafillouCredit…Angelos Tzortzinis for The New York Times

No decisive link has been made between the wiretapping and spyware infections, but two journalists with Reporters United, a small, investigative outfit in Athens, uncovered close connections between a businessman who had dealings with Intellexa, and Grigoris Dimitriadis, then general secretary of the prime minister’s office, as well as the prime minister’s nephew. Mr. Dimitriadis resigned from his position in August after the news reports. He immediately sued the news organizations and journalists behind them, a move that was widely condemned by international press freedom watchdogs.

“The stories are still up — not withdrawn,” said Thodoris Chondrogiannos, a journalist with Reporters United and one of the people Mr. Dimitriadis sued. “We’ll go on with our investigation. We will not be intimidated or afraid.”

But pursuing such stories is becoming increasingly difficult in Greece’s current media climate. In spite of the newsworthiness of the wiretapping and spyware scandals, it continues to be covered mainly by the newer, smaller Greek news outlets and the international press.

“For seven months, we were alone,” Eliza Triantafillou, an investigative journalist, told a European Parliament committee investigating the use of spyware during a hearing in September. She has broken several stories about Predator and spyware in Greece for Inside Story. “Two very small media outlets, with very limited resources … And for all the big media — newspapers, radio, TV — the story did not exist,” she said.

In an interview, Ms. Triantafillou said that she believed the key challenge in contemporary Greek media was a lack of financial independence, which “year by year is deteriorating.” Longstanding media companies in Greece tend to receive government funding, and are owned by wealthy businesspeople with other interests — like those who run a shipping company, a telecommunications company and a bank. In the view of independent journalists, that means it’s difficult to report any story critical of the government, these businesses or their close associates.

Thodoris ChondrogiannosCredit…Angelos Tzortzinis for The New York Times

The financial precariousness of journalism in Greece compounds the problem of journalistic independence. During the Greek debt crisis beginning in late 2009, and again during the pandemic, newsrooms faced significant budget cuts and mass layoffs. During the Covid pandemic, the federal government allocated 20 million euros for a public health advertising campaign and distributed the funds largely to news organizations that championed their causes, excluding others.

“Many outlets perceived as ‘opposition’ media received disproportionately lower levels of advertising revenue compared to more government-friendly media, despite the fact that many had higher circulation and readership,” the International Press Institute, a press freedom nonprofit, wrote in a letter to the Greek government at the time.

In a recent poll of the country’s journalists, 28 percent of respondents reported making less than 800 euros (about $797) per month from their journalism work, and 29 percent reported being paid fewer than 1,200 euros (roughly $1,195) per month.

While many Greeks seem to believe journalism is essential for democracy, few seem willing to pay for it. In the aftermath of the economic crisis in Greece, average circulation of national political newspapers dropped dramatically, to 216,500 in 2011 from 400,000 in 2005. Between 2011 and 2021, sales of daily newspapers declined by 74 percent, according to annual data published by the Hellenic Statistical Authority.

Police gathered outside the home of the murdered journalist Giorgos Karaivaz, where he was shot dead, in Alimos, Greece, last year.Credit…Dimitris Lampropoulos/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

In response, several small, independent news organizations — such as Reporters United, Inside Story and Solomon — have begun operating in Greece in recent years, funded by grants, subscriptions, reader contributions and partnerships in order to ensure more independent reporting.

Threats to a Greek free press are so dire that European Union Parliament members recently convened a round table discussion in Athens to, among other things, get to the bottom of the surveillance allegations. As Stefanos Loukopoulos of Vouliwatch, a nonprofit government monitoring and transparency watchdog, said, the state of traditional media in Greece also threatens the state of democracy in the country.

“What has happened with Greek mainstream media is, the corporate and government capture of the press,” he said. The prime minister, he added, placed the national broadcaster ERT under his direct control when he assumed office in 2019.

Mr. Oikonomou, the government spokesman, rebuts that criticism, writing in a statement: “Greece has a vibrant, diverse, and open media,” adding, “a cursory look at any newsstand in Greece shows a vast plurality of titles, many of which hold the government and public officials to account on a daily basis, and in the strongest possible terms.”

And yet last year, the New Democracy government passed a law making it even easier to arrest journalists. Ostensibly targeting “fake news,” this law threatens prison time to “anyone who publicly or via the internet spreads or disseminates in any way false news that is capable of causing concern or fear to the public or shattering public confidence in the national economy, the country’s defense capacity or public health.”According to Human Rights Watch, the sweeping language of this law means that journalists could face jail time for even appearing to criticize the government.

It doesn’t help matters that Greek journalists are also working in a landscape of massive public distrust — which also tanks advertising revenue and circulation numbers, further destabilizing the industry. According to a recent report by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, only 27 percent of Greeks said they felt they could trust the news generally.

Yet just 7 percent of Greeks said the country’s media were free from undue government influence, and 8 percent from commercial interests — the lowest rates in the 46 countries the report surveyed. A 2016 European Commission survey found that only 12 percent believe Greek media provide information free from political or commercial pressure. According to a recent report by the Media Freedom Rapid Response network in Europe, “Press freedom in Greece continued its marked deterioration” this year.

Because of this negative perception of journalism, Mr. Malichudis told us, “When I meet someone at the bar and, over a beer, and I say I’m a journalist, I feel that I need to explain: but I’m OK. You know? I’m OK.”

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The Week in Business: Shoppers Open Their Wallets

by SITKI KOVALI
written by SITKI KOVALI

Credit…Giacomo Bagnara

What’s Up? (Nov. 20-26)

An Inflation-Era Holiday Season

Bank account looking a little leaner than usual after Thanksgiving? That’s not altogether surprising. Those who had the classic dishes on the table on Thursday — turkey, gravy, stuffing, potatoes and, of course, lots of butter in nearly everything — paid as much as 41 percent more for their dinner this year than last. But many dug deeper into their wallets on Friday, kicking off a holiday shopping season that has billions of dollars riding on it. As inflation has climbed, showing signs of moderation only recently, interest rates have increased and pandemic fears have largely receded, retailers have struggled to keep up with consumers’ shifting habits. Some have found success with introducing holiday goods in the late summer and early fall and rolling out more early discounts.

A Shake-Up at Disney

In a surprising move, Disney on Sunday night fired its chief executive, Bob Chapek, and announced the return of his predecessor, Robert A. Iger, who left the company at the end of last year after leading it on a 15-year run of growth and profits. But that streak of good fortune ended with Mr. Chapek: Last quarter, Disney reported $1.5 billion in losses, falling short of analysts’ expectations for revenue and earnings per share, almost unheard-of for Disney. Mr. Iger has signed a two-year contract and will remain the chief executive until the end of 2024, during which time Disney’s board hopes that he can put the company back on the right path and train a successor. Investors cheered the decision, sending Disney shares soaring on Monday morning — though share prices are still off by more than a third this year.

Swift Consequences for Ticketmaster

When Ticketmaster’s site descended into chaos after opening sales for Taylor Swift concerts, it quickly became apparent that the problem was not solely the result of Ms. Swift’s immense popularity. The Justice Department had already begun an investigation into the owner of the ticket sales company, Live Nation Entertainment, seeking to determine whether it essentially acts as a monopoly in the multibillion-dollar live music industry. The company also faces scrutiny from lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, which will conduct a hearing on the lack of competition in the ticketing industry. Live Nation has said that it “takes its responsibilities under the antitrust laws seriously and does not engage in behaviors that could justify antitrust litigation.”

Credit…Giacomo Bagnara

What’s Next? (Nov. 27-Dec. 3)

The Latest on Jobs

November’s jobs report is expected to show job growth slowing once again, creeping closer to the Federal Reserve’s target of fewer than 100,000 jobs added each month. That kind of moderation would ease central bankers’ fears about wage growth and a subsequent wage-price spiral, which can occur when higher wages help send up prices, leading to more wage increases. It would also indicate that the Fed’s efforts to cool the economy with higher interest rates are beginning to work. But the latest numbers are still likely to be far from that goal. Last month, employers added 261,000 jobs, suggesting that the labor market was resilient in the face of Fed officials’ efforts. And while layoffs have swept the tech sector, they have generally remained low. The number of job openings is still high, with about 1.7 unemployed workers for each available job, close to the highest proportion on record.

Seeking New Limits on Russian Oil

European Union diplomats will meet this week in Brussels with the United States and other Group of 7 nations to discuss the possibility of a price cap on Russian oil that would limit the revenue Russia can make from its oil exports. A cap would help prevent an energy shortage, which would send prices in the European Union even higher and worsen a cost-of-living crisis affecting countries around the world. But carrying out the price cap requires some finessing: It must be high enough to ensure that Russia will continue selling but low enough that it hurts the country’s profits. The policy must also be put in place by Dec. 5 — and the price needs to be unanimously approved by European Union ambassadors. The United States has so far avoided weighing in with a specific price, but it has been the Biden administration’s goal to keep oil flowing to avoid another spike in prices.

A Rail Strike Looms Again

The threat of a rail workers strike drew nearer last week when members of a union that primarily represents freight rail conductors rejected the tentative labor agreement that had been crafted in September to avoid such an outcome. That means workers and rail companies will have to agree on another proposal by early December — or find themselves in the same position that they were in two months ago, hurtling toward an impasse that could worsen supply chain problems and inflation as well as disrupt travel. But rail workers don’t see much improvement on their central demands in the current agreement and remain concerned with the grueling, unpredictable schedules that many have said make it difficult even to go to a doctor appointment without risking repercussions at work.

Understand Inflation and How It Affects You

  • Social Security: The cost-of-living adjustment, which helps the benefit keep pace with inflation, will be 8.7 percent next year. Here is what that means.
  • Budget Surpluses: Up to 20 states are using their excess funds to help taxpayers deal with rising costs. But some economists worry that the payments could fuel inflation.
  • Tax Rates: The I.R.S. has made inflation adjustments for 2023, which could push many people into a lower tax bracket and reduce tax bills.
  • Your Paycheck: Inflation is taking a bigger and bigger bite out of your wallet. Now, it’s going to affect the size of your paycheck next year.

What Else?

Minutes from the last Fed meeting showed officials agreeing to slow interest rate increases soon. The Biden administration extended the pause on student loan payments into 2023. The special purpose acquisition company linked to former President Donald J. Trump’s social media company has been granted an extension to complete its merger.

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U.S. Allows Chevron to Expand Energy Operations in Venezuela

by SITKI KOVALI
written by SITKI KOVALI

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — The U.S. Treasury on Saturday granted Chevron a license for a limited expansion of energy operations in Venezuela, signaling the possible beginning of the country’s re-entry into the international oil market. Foreign investment in the oil sector is something that Venezuela’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, desperately needs to improve the economy.

The license was issued in response to the resumption of talks between representatives of Mr. Maduro’s government and the Venezuelan opposition in Mexico on Saturday, after a stalemate that stretched more than a year. The two sides agreed that billions in government funds frozen abroad should be transferred to a humanitarian fund administered by the United Nations.

A senior Biden administration official described Saturday’s announcements as “important steps in the right direction,” but added that there was “a long way” to go in resolving Venezuela’s complex economic, political and humanitarian crisis.

The deal is part of a shift in U.S. strategy on Venezuela that many analysts say has been accelerated by reduced global oil supplies as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Venezuela holds vast oil reserves, and its energy production potential has grown in global relevance amid the largest land war in Europe since World War II.

In a call with reporters on Saturday, the senior U.S. official rejected the notion that the license had been issued to Chevron as a result of an increase in energy prices, saying it was part of an effort by the Biden administration to restore democracy to Venezuela.

The multibillion-dollar humanitarian agreement — a verbal accord that has not yet been signed by the Maduro government or the opposition — amounts to a concession by Mr. Maduro, who has long denied the scope of the humanitarian crisis that has been unfolding in Venezuela under his watch.

The Chevron deal is limited in scope. It is good for six months, and must be renewed after that. The agreement leaves space for the United States to revoke it if Mr. Maduro does not follow through on the humanitarian or other commitments — or to offer him future concessions if he does.

The Biden Presidency

Here’s where the president stands after the midterm elections.

  • Beating the Odds: President Biden had the best midterms of any president in 20 years, but he still faces the sobering reality of a Republican-controlled House.
  • 2024 Questions: Mr. Biden feels buoyant after the better-than-expected midterms, but as he turns 80, he confronts a decision on whether to run again that has some Democrats uncomfortable.
  • The ‘Trump Project’: With Donald J. Trump’s announcement that he is officially running for president again, Mr. Biden and his advisers are planning to go on the offensive.
  • Legislative Agenda: The Times analyzed every detail of Mr. Biden’s major legislative victories and his foiled ambitions. Here’s what we found.

The Biden administration is also calling on Mr. Maduro to allow the United Nations to have unfettered access to Venezuela to write and publish assessments on the progress of the new humanitarian agreement.

In granting this license, the United States “is still holding on to plenty of leverage for future talks,” said Geoff Ramsey, director of the Venezuela program at the Washington Office on Latin America.

The Trump administration tried to weaken the administration of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, through sanctions. The Biden administration has opted for more engagement. Credit…Federico Rios for The New York Times

The Chevron deal would allow the company to expand operations at a few projects it already runs with Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA, and to import Venezuelan oil to the United States. It specifically states that the oil company is prohibited from paying any taxes or royalties to the government of Venezuela. Instead, according to the Biden administration official, profits earned will go toward the repayment of government debt to Chevron.

In an email, a Chevron spokesman, Ray Fohr, said that the company was “determined to remain a constructive presence in the country.”

Venezuela was once an affluent nation, its economy flush with oil money. But Mr. Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez — two leaders claiming socialist ideals — plunged the economy into disarray while destroying its democratic institutions.

The resulting humanitarian crisis has caused more than seven million Venezuelans, a quarter of the population, to flee to other nations. In recent months, a record number of Venezuelans have arrived at the U.S. border, seeking new lives.

During the Trump years, the administration tried to weaken Mr. Maduro through sanctions and isolation. The Biden administration has opted for more engagement.

Mr. Maduro’s larger goal is for Washington to lift all U.S. sanctions, allowing him to engage with the global economy, rebuild Venezuela’s dilapidated energy sector and restore its enfeebled economy.

Washington’s ultimate goal — and that of the otherwise often fractured Venezuelan opposition — is to push Mr. Maduro toward setting free and fair conditions for the 2024 presidential election. In the past, Mr. Maduro has controlled elections by barring many opposition leaders, jailing others and co-opting political parties.

Francisco Monaldi, director of the Latin America Energy Program at Rice University, said the Chevron deal was not just symbolic. Within two years, the company could be producing more than 200,000 barrels a day in Venezuela, adding to the approximately 765,000 barrels now pumped daily, according to Argus, an industry monitor.

The issue to watch going forward, he added, is whether other companies will be able to use the Chevron deal to pressure Washington into lifting further sanctions against Venezuela.

Current U.S. rules prohibit both American and foreign companies from buying Venezuelan oil. But entities like Repsol in Spain and Reliance in India have lobbied Washington for sanctions relief for years, Mr. Monaldi said.

“It’s very hard to justify — for the U.S. to tell India not to buy Venezuelan oil when they are buying Venezuelan oil,” he said.

While the multibillion-dollar humanitarian aid deal still needs to be finalized, on Saturday the Venezuelan government and opposition signed an accord laying out the framework for monitoring that future program. Norway will facilitate that monitoring process.

In a presentation to the press, Dag Nylander, the head of the Norwegian delegation at the meeting in Mexico, said that the aid program would work to improve the country’s public health system, its national electricity system and its public education system, and that it would address problems caused by torrential rains this year.

Julie Turkewitz reported from Bogotá, Colombia, and Zolan Kanno-Youngs from Nantucket, in Massachusetts. Isayen Herrera contributed reporting from Caracas, Venezuela.

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It’s Public Land. But the Public Can’t Reach It.

by SITKI KOVALI
written by SITKI KOVALI

The first time I showed the app to someone who had never used it, I had to gently extract my phone from the person’s hand. This happened the second time, too, and was followed by an email requesting the name of “that mapping program.”

The app is called OnX. Its basic functionality is simple: OnX shows you where you are in real time, using a blue dot exactly the same as the one on Google Maps. The difference is that OnX is designed to show where you are in a forest, on a mountain or in a canyon. It has been around since 2009 and is popular with hunters and outdoor enthusiasts.

It is also at the root of a potentially far-reaching case in federal court in which a Wyoming landowner accuses four hunters of trespassing — and causing millions of dollars in damage — even though they never stepped foot on his land.

OnX was born when Eric Siegfried, a mechanical engineer and part-time hunting guide in Montana, decided to make a Google Maps for the wilderness. He had solid navigation skills, he said, but was sick of getting lost.

To address the problem, he filled up a workspace in his wife’s scrapbooking room in Missoula with U.S. government maps, which he then loaded onto a microchip. OnX’s layers of data would eventually include everything from wind patterns to fire histories. The most important data by far, however, showed property lines.

This is because hunters, more than any other type of outdoor recreationist, need to be aware of whose property they are on, as Hal Herring, a journalist and public lands activist, explained to me.

“Hunting involves killing, and it involves people carrying weapons,” Mr. Herring said. “Many hunters are irresponsible, and they’ve got these big, high-powered rifles that people don’t want by their grandmother’s house.” Hunters can, and should, be arrested for trespassing, he added, if they are on the wrong side of a property line.

Buzz Hettick of the U.S. Forest Service using OnX software to show where public and private land meets on Elk Mountain.Credit…James Stukenberg for The New York Times

Property data is often inaccurate and outdated, and early in the development of OnX Mr. Siegfried found himself asking, “Why is there no nationwide picture of land ownership, of public and private property boundaries, of who owns what?”

This was the “game changer,” he has said. By collating state and county data and putting it on a microchip, Mr. Siegfried turned the project in the scrapbooking room into a company that just received more than $87 million from investors and that understands the American landscape arguably better than the government does.

It turned OnX almost overnight into a popular tool for the nation’s 15 million hunters.

In answering the question of who owns what, OnX helped bring to light how much public land — often highly coveted — is not reachable by the public. That’s because private landowners control access.

Across America, 15 million acres of state and federal land lies surrounded by private land, with no legal entry by road or trail. Most can be found scattered across the West, moated by ranches and corporate holdings. Such “landlocked land,” if it were one contiguous piece, would form the largest national park in the country, an area nearly the size of Vermont, New Hampshire and Connecticut.

Until a few years ago, the existence of landlocked lands in the United States was largely unknown, except to neighboring owners, some of whom “saw them as part of their ranch,” said Joel Webster, vice president of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. OnX helped expose this, he said, a change he called “profound.”

Steven Rinella called the Elk Mountain case “a new chapter in an ever-evolving debate in America about who has access to land.” Credit…Louise Johns for The New York Times

“For me it was revelatory,” said Steven Rinella, host of the popular Netflix hunting show “MeatEater.” “It opened people’s eyes to what’s out there.”

Throughout the West, hand-held technology has added a volatile ingredient to an already simmering conflict between landowners and outdoor recreationists. In small town after small town, the increased visibility of property lines on devices has coincided with a generational shift in land ownership, as wealthy out-of-state buyers have scooped up vast portions of countryside.

Many of the new owners, after buying old ranches where hunting access was generally permissive, have converted them into tightly controlled private hunting experiences charging upward of ten thousand dollars for a single elk.

Such places, often teeming with game compared with public land, have become magnets for unwanted visits by the public. And where crowds increase, tension increases, too. Especially around the fact that public land — by definition owned by all Americans — is not always publicly accessible.

One ranch manager I spoke to called it “the OnX effect.”

The allure of Elk Mountain

Four hunters from Missouri, from left, Zach Smith, Bradly Cape, Phil Yeomans and John Slowensky, say they used “corner-crossing” to reach public land near Elk Mountain.Credit…Whitney Curtis for The New York Times

On an OnX screen, Elk Mountain in southern Wyoming looks like prime hunting ground.

Eleven thousand feet high, streaked with aspen groves and alpine meadows, the imposing, solitary peak — a “formidable and huge presence,” in the words of the writer Annie Proulx, who lived nearby for many years — rises suddenly from one of the most desolate landscapes in the country.

Using OnX’s 3-D view, hunters can zoom in on the mountain’s rugged, varied terrain, which provides abundant refuge for pronghorn antelope, black bear and mule deer. They might even pinpoint the ledge where they intend to perch on Opening Day, waiting for one of the mountain’s 2,000-pound bull elk to pass by.

More important than its game-friendly topography, however, what Elk Mountain offers is landlocked land — and a legal loophole of sorts, offering access for a hunter willing to take risks.

Most of the nearby area is owned by Fred Eshelman, a drug company founder from North Carolina. In 2005, Mr. Eshelman bought a 50-square-mile ranch encompassing much of the mountain and multiple trout-filled lakes. His large home is visible for miles. And as he settled in, he aggressively moved to ward off hunters. (Not because he opposes hunting. Mr. Eshelman is a mountain lion hunter.)

However, he couldn’t keep the public out, for interspersed within his property lay 27 parcels — 11,000 acres in total, an area the size of several airports — owned by the federal Bureau of Land Management and the State of Wyoming.

Fred Eshelman, a drug company founder, owns the ranch that covers much of Elk Mountain.Credit…Ken Blevins/StarNews

Hunters tend to steer clear. “If you cross, they call the sheriff,” reported one poster on Hunt Talk, a message board. Wyoming has multiple laws against trespassing. And “if you were looking for a red-as-red county where people are pro property rights,” said Sabrina King, policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Wyoming, Carbon County, home of Elk Mountain, “would be it.”

Some hunters have long believed, however, that the publicly owned parcels on Elk Mountain can be legally reached using a practice called corner-crossing.

Corner-crossing can be visualized in terms of a checkerboard. Ever since the Westward Expansion, much of the Western United States has been divided into alternating squares of public and private land. Corner-crossers, like checker pieces, literally step from one public square to another in diagonal fashion, avoiding trespassing charges. The practice is neither legal nor illegal. Most states discourage it, but none ban it.

In 2020, Bradly Cape, a bow hunter from Missouri, drove to Wyoming to hunt with three companions. A meticulous planner, he had spent months poring over maps, perusing message boards and studying Wyoming law. Ultimately he settled on Elk Mountain.

Using OnX, Mr. Cape identified a route that began on a county road and climbed up a rattlesnake-infested hillside. Within minutes of hiking, he had found the corner, which the Eshelman ranch had carefully obstructed with two “No Trespassing” signs positioned inches apart to prevent corner-crossing.

The hunters proceeded toward the elk anyway and “killed some pretty big bulls,” said Eddie Garren, Mr. Cape’s son-in-law. Along the way, however, they were confronted by a ranch manager who warned that they were trespassing.

Undeterred, Mr. Cape and his companions returned the next hunting season. This time, to avoid contact with ranch property, they carried a ladder that was exactly six inches taller than the “No Trespassing” signs. (Mr. Cape, who owns a fencing company, fashioned the ladder out of fence piping.) After the ladder was unfolded, the four heavily armed, camouflage-wearing men performed what might have seemed like a TikTok stunt or an arcane ritual, placing a ladder over a pair of five-foot-tall signs — the only obstacles around for miles — and climbing over it one by one as if they were avoiding an invisible electric fence.

The spot where Mr. Eshelman’s land abuts public land. The four hunters used a ladder to get from one corner of public land to another over the signs.Credit…James Stukenberg for The New York Times

They proceeded to camp on the mountain for nearly a week, during which Mr. Eshelman’s ranch hands pursued them in pickup trucks, Mr. Cape said. A game and fish warden cited them for criminal trespassing, forcing them to return to Wyoming the next spring.

Their trial seemed to touch a nerve in Wyoming, a state where it can be hard to get calls returned in hunting season. Even self-proclaimed private property die-hards seemed troubled by the government’s expansive claims. Could a hunter — or anyone — be jailed simply for waving an arm across a neighbor’s fence?

Prosecutors argued yes. “Landowners don’t just own the land,” claimed Ashley Mayfield Davis, the Carbon County attorney. “You also own your airspace.”

A jury disagreed, acquitting the men after two hours of deliberation. By then, however, Mr. Eshelman had filed a civil trespassing suit, demanding that the hunters pay $3 million to $7 million for property damage. And the battle had been joined by others spoiling for a fight.

Supercharging the question of access

Some hunters hunt a piece of land for its game, others to experience the land itself. For Buzz Hettick, the power of Elk Mountain originates elsewhere.

“My dad used to hunt some private property in Montana,” said Mr. Hettick, a forester with the U.S. Forest Service. “And one year they told us, ‘Sorry, you can’t anymore — we leased it to an outfitter.’ I was crushed. And I was like, you know what? This is never going to happen to me again.”

Mr. Hettick called apps like OnX “the best thing that’s happened to access in years.”Credit…James Stukenberg for The New York Times

Standing in a patch of bitterroot, serviceberry and sage at the foot of Elk Mountain, Mr. Hettick called apps such as OnX “the best thing that’s happened to access in years.”

Last fall, Mr. Hettick, who lives in Laramie, Wyo., heard about the charges against the Missouri hunters. Sensing an opportunity long awaited by advocates of public lands, he activated the resources of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers; Mr. Hettick is co-chair of the group’s Wyoming chapter.

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers helped the Missouri hunters find lawyers, rallied its 35,000 members for support and started a GoFundMe page, which has raised more than $110,000 to pay the hunters’ legal bills.

“It’s super grass roots,” Mr. Hettick said. “You’ve got people who probably can’t afford to give $5 but feel so strongly about public lands that they donate to these guys.” Echoing nearly all public discussion of the case, he called the civil suit overreaching and punitive.

“What judge, jury or person with two firing brain cells is going to say that crossing that airspace is worth $7 million?” he said. “That’s not going to happen. It’s absurd.”

Mr. Eshelman did not respond to an interview request for this article. Discussing the case in an email statement to The Wall Street Journal this month, he said “forcible trespass” was a safety issue and could affect the property value.

“There’s a pattern of bullying,” said Land Tawney, executive director of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers. “When a landowner claims $7 million in damage for trespassing, people are meant to be intimidated.”

If OnX supercharged the question of who gets to go where — though the company declined to take a side in the case — Backcountry Hunters & Anglers gave it an influential platform.

Laura Orvidas, the chief executive of OnX, said the app “doesn’t say where an individual user can and can’t go.”Credit…Louise Johns for The New York Times

The Missoula-based organization focuses less on firearms advocacy and more on sustainability. Under Mr. Tawney, who worked in conservation before becoming executive director in 2013, the group has tried to modernize and counter the perception of hunters as “old white dudes with beer in their hands,” said Elizabeth Lynch, a member of the group’s Wyoming board.

However, as it has for OnX, its crosstown neighbor, the question of public access — of who gets to go where — has become its bread and butter. And courts have been favorable terrain. From Idaho to New Mexico, conflicts over sportsmen’s access have roiled the West, thanks in part to the exploding popularity of outdoor recreation. More Americans than ever are off-roading, ice climbing, snowmobiling and trout fishing, which has made it more lucrative than ever to fence off a canyon or a valley — or use drones to patrol a private stream — and charge for access.

“Hunting has become big business,” Mr. Herring said. “And people who have leased land for hunting don’t want people who aren’t paying to be on it. As a result, the issue of trespassing has gotten hotter every year.”

Resentment of landowners and commercial hunting has heated up as well.

“If you go back a few decades, it was a lot easier for the public to go knock on the door and get access to private land,” said Mr. Webster of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, which has worked with OnX on public lands initiatives. “Generally, the people who owned the land had roots in that community — they went to church together, they went to school together, they grew up together. And if you want to access my place, that’s fine, just let me know — that kind of thing.”

That trust has eroded, in part because of a generational shift away from family farming and ranching. “The owners and their kids don’t want to continue that tradition,” Mr. Webster said, “so they end up selling to a new landowner who maybe isn’t from the area, and who may not have the same feelings about the public on their lands.”

The result — bitter confrontations steeped with class overtones and hinting at larger grievances — is now a staple of the West.

Legislatures have stepped in to resolve the conflicts, largely in favor of landowners and corporate interests seeking to limit public access, while judges have gravitated toward loosening restrictions. For outdoor advocacy groups, the issue can be a public-relations nightmare, since the deep-pocketed donors they court for financial support are often landowners.

Like a corner-crosser, OnX has found itself navigating a narrowly contested space. In 2018, Mr. Siegfried stepped down as chief executive to focus on public land advocacy. At the same time, the company began publishing a stream of “access initiatives” trumpeting the issues of landlocked and corner-locked land.

Laura Orvidas, who took over for Mr. Siegfried as the chief executive of OnX, does not believe that the app facilitates trespassing.

“That is the opposite of the app’s intent,” said Ms. Orvidas, who came to OnX from Amazon. “The app doesn’t say where an individual user can and can’t go. And it doesn’t say where they can and can’t hunt. It’s up to each user to interpret that data for their unique situation — which hunting units they have tags for, whose property they have permission to be on — and understand the rules and regulations of their area.”

Where does a property line start?

A small herd of pronghorn on a hilltop near Elk Mountain, in early morning.Credit…James Stukenberg for The New York Times

Public discussion has tended to portray the civil case against the Missouri hunters as extreme and untenable — a desperate move by a vindictive plaintiff standing on shaky legal ground asking the question: If you disturb the air particles over your neighbor’s land, have you potentially committed a crime?

David Willms doesn’t think the case is a joke, though. Mr. Willms, a lawyer and policy adviser for the National Wildlife Federation, hosts a podcast, “Your Mountain,” which, as its name suggests, is devoted to the issue of public lands and has not aligned himself with either party in the Elk Mountain dispute. He worries that the case could have unintended consequences.

“Can the landowner make a straight-faced argument that passing through the airspace is a trespass?” said Mr. Willms, who previously worked for the Wyoming attorney general’s office handling similar cases. “Absolutely.” He points out that Wyoming has a statute under which “ownership of the space above the lands and waters of this state is declared to be vested in the several owners of the surface beneath.”

“Can the hunters make a straight-faced argument that passing through the airspace isn’t a trespass?” he continued. “Yeah, they can.”

But if the civil case goes to trial and reaches a verdict, he thinks the outcome could easily end in favor of landowners. Moreover, if the hunters win, “it would not surprise me at all that the Legislature would come back and pass a law saying corner crossing is illegal,” he said. “It’s sort of if you win, you lose, and if you lose, you lose.”

The head of Wyoming’s powerful ranching lobby isn’t laughing, either. Jim Magagna believes that the optics of the case are what drew advocates of corner-crossing, knowing how “a wealthy landowner who lives out of state” and who has made some “rather large claims in terms of the damage being done to him” would be perceived.

According to Mr. Magagna, the hunters’ case isn’t just about a legal right to corner-cross. Under one interpretation of federal law, the public wouldn’t have to corner-cross at all to get to landlocked land: If the only way to reach public land is through private land, people can just take the most direct route “right through the middle.”

That means, in Mr. Magagna’s view, it’s possible that ranches used for exclusive hunting experiences would have to open in part to the public — if the ranch is the most direct route to public lands.

“The implications are potentially very large,” he added, noting that the ranches would lose value.

That would affect more than wealthy landowners, said Megan Lawson of Headwaters Economics, a community development nonprofit in Bozeman, Mont.

“Amenity economies depend on guiding services, lodging and hospitality in general,” Ms. Lawson said. “That’s the lifeblood of the economy in several states.”

Mr. Rinella of “MeatEater,” one of hunting’s biggest celebrities, has raised money for the hunters. “I’m not advocating civil disobedience,” he said. “I’d like to see the corner-crossing issue clarified.”

He called the Elk Mountain case “a new chapter in an ever-evolving debate in America about who has access to land” and said it had exposed some landowners as being “concerned about losing exclusive access to property that is not theirs.”

“No one’s going to grant access out of the goodness of their heart,” he added.

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The Excitement Around E-Sports Is Growing. But Where Are the Profits?

by SITKI KOVALI
written by SITKI KOVALI

It had been more than three hours of tense, back-and-forth combat — projected across the massive Jumbotron at San Francisco’s Chase Center — when the sellout crowd, thumping together inflatable thundersticks and yelling with excitement, sensed victory was at hand.

A South Korean e-sports team, DRX, guided their video game characters into the home base of the rival T1 squad and smashed its Nexus, a blue gemstone, to pieces, clinching this year’s League of Legends world championship.

Fans roared their approval, fireworks flared, the winners embraced, and the losers sobbed into their keyboards. Executives from Riot Games, the League of Legends publisher, presented DRX with diamond rings sponsored by Mercedes, celebrating the pinnacle of the professional video game scene.

It was a perfectly choreographed event, the kind of spectacle gaming publishers had promised investors from the traditional sports world when they first pitched them on putting their money into the rapidly growing e-sports industry in the mid-2010s.

“I remember seeing a team come out and the fans were going crazy and asking for autographs. I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this is just like our experience,’” said Zach Leonsis, the son of Ted Leonsis, who owns the N.B.A.’s Washington Wizards and the N.H.L.’s Washington Capitals. The younger Mr. Leonsis invested in an e-sports team in 2016.

But despite the industry’s growth and appeal to the young consumers traditional sports owners are desperate to attract, the money has not followed. Some sports owners have soured on the industry’s short-term prospects after discovering that the methods that make money in traditional sports — like building fan bases in specific cities and striking lucrative deals with television networks — don’t always apply in e-sports.

The recent League of Legends championship was played before a sold-out crowd in San Francisco.Credit…Jason Henry for The New York Times

Most have not yet turned a profit or seen a return on their investments, and the gaming publishers that control the biggest competitive leagues in North America, like Riot and Activision Blizzard, are operating those leagues at a loss or just beginning to break even.

Though major e-sports events sell out buildings like the Chase Center and attract tens of millions of viewers in China, tickets cost less than for traditional sports games, and far fewer Americans are watching e-sports than the 12.4 million who watched the 2022 N.B.A. finals or the 17 million the N.F.L. averaged for 2021 regular season games, a difference that means less interest from advertisers.

Most critically, leagues like the N.B.A. and N.F.L. earn billions of dollars each year through broadcast deals with television networks, while many e-sports are streamed for free on sites like YouTube and Twitch. Some early revenue projections included anticipated broadcasting deals with Twitch and YouTube that were less lucrative and consistent than expected.

E-sports has a fast-growing fan base in the United States after years of popularity in Asia.Credit…Jason Henry for The New York Times

Of course, e-sports investors did not expect the industry to supplant traditional sports in just a few years. But some have still been underwhelmed by early returns.

“They certainly pitched us that the growth of these leagues would be meteoric, and we all drank the Kool-Aid,” said Ben Spoont, the chief executive of an e-sports organization called Misfits Gaming, whose backers include the owners of the N.B.A.’s Orlando Magic and the N.F.L.’s Cleveland Browns. “What has happened is that growth has not materialized as fast as we had hoped.”

There are other challenges. Most League of Legends competitions in North America take place at Riot’s arena in Los Angeles, where many teams are based. That deprives e-sports teams of a chance to make money hosting games or to build a fan base in a specific region.

Activision aimed to change that with leagues based on Overwatch and Call of Duty, its first-person shooter games. Both would hold home and away matches, with teams located around the country like traditional sports teams. Activision charged investors $20 million to join the Overwatch League.

But the league was just building momentum when the Covid-19 pandemic forced it to cancel in-person events. Since then, it has struggled to gain traction. Activision allowed teams to defer fees to be in the league, and is now helping teams cover their costs, paying each of the league’s 20 teams about $1 million this year, according to a person with knowledge of the league’s finances.

Lil Nas X performing during the opening ceremony for the League of Legends world Championship.Credit…Jason Henry for The New York Times

“Even with the recalibration brought on by the pandemic, we’ve had full arenas and record viewership,” said Joe Christinat, an Activision spokesman, adding that there was “overwhelming enthusiasm” for the new Overwatch and Call of Duty games. “Our fans want these leagues, and we remain committed to them.”

Investors have also realized that game publishers’ incentives are not necessarily aligned with their own. Publishers can afford to operate money-losing e-sports leagues as long as they drive interest in their profitable video games, so they sometimes prioritize growth over revenue. Riot, for instance, might hesitate to sign a contract to broadcast League of Legends exclusively on YouTube or Twitch because it would preclude viewers in China, where both services are blocked, from tuning in.

Those kinds of conflicting aims have at times led to tense negotiations.

“It’s a push and pull,” said Kirk Lacob, the son of Joe Lacob, who owns the Golden State Warriors. “I’ve had long discussions with various members at Riot over the years.” In addition to serving as executive vice president of basketball operations, the younger Mr. Lacob oversees the Warriors’ e-sports teams.

Kirk Lacob’s point of view is common among the sports ownership groups that have bought or invested in e-sports teams, a list that includes Stan Kroenke of the Los Angeles Rams, Robert Kraft of the New England Patriots and Hal Steinbrenner of the New York Yankees. A former gamer, Mr. Lacob discovered the competitive gaming scene in recent years and was enthralled by the prospect of reaching a young and growing audience. He remains bullish on the industry — but would like to start seeing some results.

“I really believe that where there are eyeballs, where there’s usage, there’s eventually revenue,” he said.

Naz Aletaha, global head of League of Legends Esports, and John Needham, Riot’s president of e-sports, at the Chase Center, home of the Golden State Warriors.Credit…Jason Henry for The New York Times

Gaming executives urge patience. They say e-sports, popular for decades in Asia, are still nascent in North America, and should be thought of more as a high-growth start-up than a fully mature business. U.S. viewers watched an estimated 217 million hours of e-sports content this year, according to the data firm Stream Hatchet, up from 147 million in 2018. “We often say that we’re still in the leather helmet days of the N.F.L.,” said Naz Aletaha, Riot’s global head of League of Legends e-sports.

Many investors in the space still believe e-sports will eventually become a dominant, profitable industry. But in the short-term, some are “very frustrated,” said John Needham, Riot’s president of e-sports, adding that Riot has worked to convince investors to embrace a different monetization model.

Though sponsorships still make up a majority of revenue, a cornerstone of Riot’s strategy involves microtransactions: selling recreational League of Legends players in-game items for their characters that are themed around real-world e-sports events like the world championship.

It sounds like a niche revenue source, but early numbers have been eye popping. When Riot hosted its 2022 championship event for Valorant, another e-sport, it made $40 million from microtransactions alone. Half of that went to the league’s teams through a revenue-sharing agreement.

People dressed as characters from League of Legends before the world championship at the Chase Center in San Francisco.Credit…Jason Henry for The New York Times

“This is where we’re going to disrupt the broadcast revenue formula, because that scales,” Mr. Needham said.

For now, the costly endeavor of fielding competitive teams is simply a catalyst for the real revenue-generating operations at many e-sports organizations. Prominent teams like FaZe Clan and 100 Thieves have morphed into more general lifestyle brands that offer viewers apparel and livestreaming entertainment. FaZe Clan, which went public this year in what was seen as a bellwether for the industry, is losing money and cutting costs as shares of its stock plummet.

Felix LaHaye, the chief executive of United Esports, a gaming marketing agency, compared competitive play for e-sports organizations to a car company fielding a Formula One racing team — an expensive undertaking that draws eyeballs and prestige.

“It creates value elsewhere in their ecosystem,” Mr. LaHaye said. “It’s worth it to have a loss leader in terms of a product that creates the brand, and then you end up selling normal products to people.”

E-sports fans were able to play on computers outside the Chase Center.Credit…Jason Henry for The New York Times

Even Team Liquid, considered one of the more competition-focused e-sports organizations, has made much of its money elsewhere and now has nine separate sources of revenue, including owning an e-sports encyclopedia website, said Mark Vela, the chief executive of Axiomatic Gaming, Team Liquid’s ownership group.

“It’s a natural evolution,” Mr. Vela said. “Everyone’s having to take a step back, and seeing what’s really working for us here.”

Team Liquid, which took in more than $38 million in revenue last year, is not yet profitable, but Mr. Vela, whose ownership group includes the Leonsis father-son duo, said e-sports remain alluring because of the rare type of young, affluent viewer they attract. .

Mr. Spoont is also optimistic long term, but he is not willing to wait. In July, he sold his European League of Legends team to a Spanish e-sports group for about $35 million. He said he was pivoting Misfits to focus on content creation, partly because it could be another decade before competitive e-sports reach their potential.

“We were trying to accomplish as an industry what took the N.B.A. 50 years, but we were trying to do it within a five-year time period,” he said, referring to the many N.B.A. teams that were not immediately lucrative businesses. “Turns out that it doesn’t happen.”

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