MADRID — Lamine Yamal took center stage as nearly two million supporters flooded the streets of Madrid on Monday to celebrate Spain’s World Cup title, with the teenage star grabbing a microphone to sing Bad Bunny songs and carrying the trophy through the Spanish capital during an open-top bus parade that stretched from Moncloa Palace to Cibeles Square.

Less than 24 hours after Spain’s 1-0 extra-time victory over Argentina in New Jersey, the country’s champions returned home to scenes organizers described as unforgettable. An estimated 1.8 to 2 million supporters lined Madrid’s historic avenues, transforming the capital into a sea of red and yellow as the squad made its way through the city on the same route once traveled after Spain’s first World Cup title in 2010.

A royal welcome before the party began

The day’s celebrations opened with a formal reception at Zarzuela Palace, where King Felipe VI and the royal family congratulated the players before the squad met separately with Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. Players later swapped their formal attire for commemorative “We Are Champions” shirts as they boarded the open-top bus for the parade through the city.

Spain coach Luis de la Fuente reflected on the emotional weight of the day before the parade got underway. “It’s been an emotional and proud experience to represent a wonderful country with such passionate and devoted fans,” de la Fuente said. “We are filled with joy.”

Yamal at the center of the celebration

Yamal was among the most visibly celebrated figures throughout the day, proudly carrying the World Cup trophy as thousands of fans chanted his name along the parade route. The 19-year-old Barcelona forward was regularly seen dancing alongside Athletic Club winger Nico Williams throughout the procession, and later took the microphone to sing along to Bad Bunny tracks as the bus wound through central Madrid.

Fellow Spain players embraced the festive atmosphere throughout the parade, with forward Borja Iglesias stepping into an impromptu DJ role while teammates danced atop the bus and interacted with fans lining the streets below. Several players draped themselves in Spanish flags as the celebration continued.

A pointed moment amid the celebration

Not all of Monday’s moments were purely celebratory. While riding the open-top bus, Yamal and teammate Fabian Ruiz were seen laughing and pointing at a sign held up by fans that mockingly referred to a post-match altercation between Argentina’s Leandro Paredes and Spain’s Gavi as the “event of the year,” a nod to the tension that had colored the final’s closing moments in New Jersey.

A fashion statement from the match-winner

Match-winner Ferran Torres, whose extra-time goal secured the title, provided one of the day’s most talked-about moments with his choice of headwear, wearing a red cap emblazoned with the phrase “Make Spain Great Again,” a cheeky reference to President Donald Trump, who had presented the players with their medals just 24 hours earlier at the tournament’s trophy ceremony.

Speaking to reporters after returning from New York, Torres reflected on the significance of seeing young fans celebrate the victory, attributing the team’s success to sustained hard work throughout the tournament.

A hero’s welcome for the captain

Spain captain and Golden Ball winner Rodri received one of the loudest ovations of the night when the squad arrived at Cibeles Square for the final ceremony. Rodri, who recovered from a serious knee injury suffered in 2024 before returning to lift both the World Cup trophy and the tournament’s top individual honor two years later, led the crowd in chants for teammate Marc Cucurella, who briefly took over playing drums during the celebration. Rodri also used the moment to publicly defend Torres, noting that the forward had faced unfair criticism in the past but had now secured an undeniable place in Spanish football history.

A ceremony introducing each champion individually

Authorities estimated roughly 120,000 people were on hand specifically for the ceremony at Cibeles Square, where players were introduced one by one onto a specially constructed stage, each entering to a song of their own choosing. Alex Baena, celebrating his 25th birthday during the festivities, entered carrying the World Cup trophy. Coach de la Fuente was lifted into the air by his players after being introduced to the crowd, and joined in singing along to the music played for him.

Celebrations extended well beyond Madrid

The party stretched far beyond the capital. In Valencia, roughly 30,000 fans gathered in Plaza del Ayuntamiento for a public viewing event, with fireworks and sparklers illuminating the celebration once Spain secured the title. In Mataro, Yamal’s working-class hometown north of Barcelona, a capacity crowd of approximately 10,000 packed Parc Central to watch their local hero play in his first World Cup final, with red smoke filling the gathering after Torres’ decisive goal.

A drought finally ended

Monday’s celebrations marked the end of a 16-year wait for Spain’s second World Cup title, following the country’s first triumph in South Africa in 2010. Looking ahead, Prime Minister Sanchez suggested Spain could pursue a third world championship when the country co-hosts the 2030 tournament alongside Portugal and Morocco, extending what has become one of the most successful periods in the history of Spanish football.

What comes next

With Monday’s celebrations now complete, Spain’s players are expected to shift their focus toward upcoming club commitments and international fixtures, carrying momentum from one of the youngest championship-winning squads in this year’s tournament. Anchored by a core group featuring Yamal, Nico Williams and Torres, Spain now enters a new period as the reigning men’s World Cup champion, with expectations already building toward the team’s title defense on home soil in 2030.

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Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have no stock, option or similar derivative position in any of the companies mentioned, and no plans to initiate any such positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Seeking Alpha’s Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.

A US federal judge has temporarily blocked the proposed $110bn (£85bn) merger between media giants Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros Discovery.

The decision follows a lawsuit brought by a coalition of 12 US states, including California and New York, aiming to halt the deal over concerns it would stifle competition and raise consumer prices.

Prosecutors representing the states said merging two major studios would cause “substantial harm on movie theatres, basic cable distributors, and, ultimately, audiences nationwide”.

In response, the media giants argued that the states had misread the market and that merging would improve streaming efficiency.

US district judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín issued the temporary restraining order on Monday following legals arguments heard last week.

Under the 14-day injunction, neither company can finalise the deal or start joining the businesses together.

In her ruling, the judge noted that the state coalition raised “serious questions” regarding the deal’s impact on movie distribution.

She warned that allowing the merger to proceed now would make it “extraordinarily difficult to unscramble the egg” if the court decided later to block it all together.

Judge Martínez-Olguín also pushed back against the companies’ arguments, highlighting that “public’s vital interest in antitrust enforcement” outweighed any temporary delay to the merger.

She said that Paramount and Warner Bros “will continue to operate as separate, viable companies competing in the marketplace” while legal proceedings continue.

Almost 3,000 websites have been blocked or seized for illegally streaming World Cup matches, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has said.

More than 1,000 domains were shut down in the US alone during the tournament, with a similar number blocked in Colombia.

Enforcement agencies in America and across South America carried out the action under investigations named “operation offsides” and “operation red card”.

Ivan J. Arvelo, director of the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (NIPRCC), said unauthorised broadcasting of World Cup matches violated intellectual property rights and “fuels criminal organizations”.

The DOJ said at the end of last month it had taken down 400 webpages over illegal World Cup streaming. Now hundreds more have been taken down or blocked.

“The sustained effort to seize more than a thousand domains dedicated to illegally streaming the World Cup confirms the administration’s commitment to intellectual property rights and to the success of the 2026 FIFA World Cup,” said the DOJ’s assistant attorney general A. Tysen Duva.

The enforcement has been largely overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a federal agency that includes the NIPRCC.

The illegal streaming of sports often happens through webpages or websites created specifically for the event. Companies and broadcasters have estimated, external the activity costs them billions of dollars a year.

Due to its global popularity, football has been found to be pirated at an “industrial scale”, according to analysts. The increasing cost of rights deals for matches has resulted in higher prices for fans at home, especially if they choose to pay for multiple services to watch their team play.

It has led to some fans turning to illegal streams of big games to avoid such costs.

Charles Rivkin, chairman of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), which aims to combat digital piracy and helped in the police effort, said on Monday that the World Cup was the “kind of global live event that piracy networks move quickly to exploit”.

The crackdown on illegal streaming was also supported by Fifa, which organises the World Cup, beIN Media Group, NBC Universal, Ultimate Fighting Championship, and Warner Brothers.

Much of Fifa’s revenue comes from the sale of broadcasting rights to the various global media networks that want to televise matches.

Fifa and the other media entities did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Colombian Attorney General’s Office said it had even made several arrests in connection with the operations.

Four members of what was referred to as the “cybercriminal group” Los Ciberinfiltrados were arrested for allegedly gaining and distributing access to World Cup games illegally.

Another 830 websites in Argentina, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil and the Dominican Republic were also taken down.

As well as illegal streaming, police in Colombia conducted “nationwide search-and-seizure operations” around counterfeit sports clothing.

The DoJ said 11 people in the country has been arrested and convicted for the illegal manufacture and distribution of fake sporting merchandise.

Families are skipping meals to make ends meet during the school holidays, a charity has warned.

FareShare Sussex & Surrey says some parents are facing extra food costs as children cannot access free school meals over the summer break.

Dan Slatter, chief executive of the charity, told the BBC there was a “mountain of need. There’s a growing number of people that are facing food insecurity or even more extreme hunger.”

The government funds local authorities across England to run holiday activities and food camps, which are known as Club4 in Surrey.

These camps are only for children who receive benefit-related free school meals, Surrey County Council says on its website.

Steve, a senior warehouse manager at FareShare Sussex & Surrey, said he used a food bank when he was homeless with his daughter 11 years ago.

“All the benefits I was getting were going on fuel to get my daughter to and from school every day,” he told the BBC.

“We were struggling.

“I didn’t want to ask for help, but it got to the point where we weren’t eating.”

“If this trend keeps happening one or two years down the line, I don’t know,” she said.

“We can’t keep buying food [and] if people can’t afford to donate the food then we’ll struggle.”

Loki Stokes, the food bank’s food logistics manager, added that he has “never seen our stock this low”.

“We try to hold a week’s buffer across all nine outlets, but this summer that’s getting hard to promise,” he said.

A Somerset Council spokesperson said the authority recognised that many households continue to face financial pressures due to the ongoing cost of living crisis.

“These pressures will increase for many families over the summer holidays.

“The three years of government funding provided through the Crisis and Resilience Fund enable us to build on our strong partnerships with organisations across Somerset, helping to ensure that residents who need support can access it close to where they live,” they added.

When business moves fast, technology entrepreneur Mason Jappa slows his thinking down.

That instinct may seem counterintuitive for an entrepreneur who considers speed one of a founder’s greatest advantages. Yet after a decade of company building in emerging technology markets, Jappa has watched confidence turn into carelessness. Downturns expose weak balance sheets and fragile teams, but rapid growth can distort judgment just as quickly.

“The moments I’ve made my worst decisions were always when I was caught up in momentum rather than anchored in fundamentals,” Jappa said in a recent interview. “I now treat rapid growth as a time to slow down intellectually, to ask harder questions, stress-test assumptions and make sure the foundation is solid before building higher.”

Founders need enough urgency to move before the market catches up, but enough discipline to keep speed from replacing sound judgment.

Experience reshaped Jappa’s definition of leadership. Early in his career, he relied on personal conviction, long hours and an ability to persuade others to believe in an idea before the broader market did. That intensity helped him gain ground in an industry many people still dismissed. Over time, he learned that founder energy may launch a company, but durable systems and capable teams must carry it through changing market cycles.

Mason Jappa’s entrepreneurial journey began with a conviction that Bitcoin represented more than a volatile asset. When he discovered Bitcoin and the broader blockchain ecosystem in 2012, he saw infrastructure, a decentralized financial network that could give individuals greater control over their money.

In 2017, he founded Blockware Solutions to help Bitcoin miners source hardware, secure hosting and navigate an opaque, fragmented market. He combined a background in finance and enterprise technology with a willingness to enter the blockchain industry before it gained widespread acceptance.

Jappa said the company generated more than $500 million in revenue and helped deploy more than 400,000 mining machines. His team also produced research that reached more than 1 million readers and earned citations from Forbes, CoinDesk, Wired and other publications.

He also helped Blockware Mining secure clearing privileges at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, a milestone he viewed as evidence that institutional markets had begun to take Bitcoin mining infrastructure seriously.

Those achievements reinforced a broader company-building lesson. In an unfamiliar market, credibility can create an advantage that capital alone cannot buy.

“In an industry full of noise, we built trust through education,” Jappa said. “That trust became our most durable competitive advantage.”

Jappa Says Build the Team Before the Cycle Turns

Rapid growth can make founder intensity look like a complete leadership system.

Mason Jappa once believed the founder should set the pace, carry the clearest vision and work harder than anyone else in the organization.

“When I started Blockware in 2017, my leadership model was essentially: have the strongest conviction in the room and outwork everyone,” he said. “And honestly, that got us a long way.”

That approach created urgency, but it placed much of the organization’s momentum on one person. Industry contractions eventually exposed the limits of a company powered primarily by its founder.

“Bitcoin markets are brutal teachers,” he said. “When the price collapses and the industry contracts, you find out very quickly whether you built a team or just assembled a group of people around your own momentum.”

His approach to leadership evolved through periods of growth and difficulty. Jappa became more deliberate about developing employees, acknowledging what he did not know and allowing the strongest idea to prevail regardless of who proposed it. Instead of remaining the central source of energy and answers, he focused on building a team that could think, decide and execute under pressure.

“The best decisions I’ve made have been about people,” Jappa said. “Bitcoin mining taught me that businesses built for the bull market collapse in the bear market. I’ve always tried to build for durability.”

Founders do not need less conviction. They need to turn that conviction into shared capability before the market tests the organization.

Speed and Focus Before Scale

Mason Jappa’s advice to founders reflects hard-earned experience in industries where technology, capital and public perception can shift within months.

He places speed and focus ahead of funding and connections because founders can control the first two. They can choose how quickly they test an idea, how decisively they respond to evidence and how carefully they protect the company from distractions.

“Capital follows execution. Connections follow credibility,” Jappa said. “Both of those follow a founder who moves decisively and stays locked on what actually matters.”

Speed does not mean chasing every opportunity. It means shortening the distance between insight and action. Focus requires founders to protect the company’s central mission when hype and outside pressure create tempting detours.

That discipline matters most when an entrepreneur operates ahead of consensus. Emerging markets rarely offer clear proof at the beginning. Jappa believes founders must become comfortable acting while others remain skeptical, provided they can support their conviction with research, operating knowledge and a defined advantage.

“The founders who win in rapidly evolving industries are almost always the ones who saw the wave coming and paddled hard before anyone else was in the water,” he said.

Jappa applies three filters when evaluating technology ventures. The technology must solve a problem that exists at scale, the market must have reached the right infrastructure moment and the founder must possess an advantage that competitors cannot easily reproduce.

The framework helps separate foresight from trend-chasing. Being early has little value when the problem is imaginary, the timing is wrong or the business lacks a defensible position.

Mason Jappa: ‘Build Your Reputation Like It’s Your Most Valuable Asset’

Founders often track cash, customer growth and market share before they measure trust. Jappa argues that reputation deserves the same strategic attention as any other core asset.

“Build your reputation like it’s your most valuable asset, because it is,” he said. “In fast-moving industries, trust is scarce and credibility travels fast in both directions.”

Jappa built visibility through research, media relationships and consistent execution. He did not treat communication as a promotional layer added after the business matured. He used it to help investors, partners and customers understand an unfamiliar market.

He calls storytelling infrastructure because clear communication supports nearly every part of a growing company. It gives employees a shared language for the mission, helps investors understand the business beyond its projections and shows customers why the company’s approach differs from its competitors.

A strong narrative cannot rescue a weak strategy. Founders still must deliver results. But even a valuable business can struggle when its leaders cannot explain what it solves or why the market should trust it.

The same principle shapes Jappa’s view of fundraising. After raising more than $100 million across multiple entities, he came to see capital as a tool rather than an objective.

“The best way to raise it is to not need it,” he said.

Companies gain leverage when they can show revenue, demand and a credible path to growth before approaching outside investors. Founders also must study the structure of capital, not only the amount. An impressive funding announcement can conceal terms that weaken the business over time.

A Decade of Building, Distilled

Over the past decade, Mason Jappa has learned that entrepreneurship rewards conviction, but it tests judgment.

Founders must act before certainty arrives. They also must know when to question their assumptions, strengthen the organization beneath the growth and resist believing that momentum proves every decision correct.

Jappa views market cycles as leadership tests. A downturn shows whether the company can endure pressure. A surge shows whether leaders can protect the business from excess confidence, careless spending and a false sense of permanence.

“I’ve seen more founders destroyed by a good market than by a bad one,” he said. “Build like the cycle is always about to turn, because eventually it will.”

Jappa still believes entrepreneurs create value by recognizing possibilities before the crowd does. Experience has made him more selective about what deserves that belief and more deliberate about what must follow it.

The work does not end when the market validates an idea. That is when founders must build the systems, leadership and trust required to carry it further.

Strong founders, he believes, do more than arrive early. They build organizations designed to endure after the rest of the market catches up.

“The role I hope to play is the same one I’ve always aimed for: being the operator who builds the infrastructure layer before the crowd arrives and doing it in a way that leaves the industry more open, more competitive and more resilient than I found it,” Jappa said.

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Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have no stock, option or similar derivative position in any of the companies mentioned, and no plans to initiate any such positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

I am not a registered investment adviser, broker, dealer, or tax professional. This article, including any comments or replies I post, reflects my personal opinions only and is provided for informational and educational purposes. Nothing I write is investment, legal, tax, or financial advice, or a personalized recommendation to buy, sell, hold, or short any security. My views may change without notice. Nothing I write is tailored to any reader’s objectives, financial situation, risk tolerance, or portfolio. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Readers should conduct their own research and consult a qualified professional before making investment decisions.

Seeking Alpha’s Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.