Author & Media Personality

Featured Entrepreneur: Building an Empire One Episode at a Time

Arthur Brooks is a Harvard professor (specifically the Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Professor of Managem…

Featured Entrepreneur

Featured Entrepreneur

Arthur Brooks is a Harvard professor (specifically the Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School). He’s a social scientist, #1 New York Times bestselling author (e.g., From Strength to Strength and Build the Life You Want with Oprah Winfrey), and expert on the science of happiness, leadership, and nonprofit management. He teaches courses on these topics, runs the Leadership & Happiness Laboratory, writes columns, hosts a podcast, and focuses on helping people build happier, more meaningful lives through evidence-based insights.

The Garmin Fenix (often stylized as fēnix) is a premium series of multisport GPS smartwatches made by Garmin, designed primarily for athletes, outdoor adventurers, and fitness enthusiasts. It features advanced tracking for activities like running, hiking, skiing, diving, and strength training; long battery life (often weeks, with solar options extending it further); built-in maps, heart rate monitoring, health metrics (e.g., VO2 max, Pulse Ox), and rugged durability (e.g., sapphire lenses, titanium builds in newer models like the Fenix 8). The latest versions include AMOLED displays, built-in speakers/mics, LED flashlights, and dive capabilities.

“Success leaves clues — study those who’ve already built what you want to build.”

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Source: https://youtu.be/miXVWgBVrf8?si=WoNOAJvHLmuQ9JF4

MMA Champion, Boxer & Entrepreneur

Conor McGregor’s Franck Muller Vanguard: The Notorious One’s Diamond-Bezel Watch

From a plumber’s apprentice in Crumlin collecting welfare to the first UFC fighter in history to hold two championship belts simultaneously, Conor McGregor built an empire through will, performance, and a persona so big it became its own industry. The Franck Muller Vanguard with diamond bezel on his wrist is exactly the watch the “Master of Complications” designed for the man who complicated every room he walked into.

Conor McGregor — Franck Muller Vanguard. Source: @thenotoriousmma / Instagram

Franck Muller Vanguard — tonneau case, bold Arabic numerals, diamond-set bezel

Conor Anthony McGregor was born July 14, 1988, the youngest of three children in a working-class family in Crumlin, Dublin 12. His father Tony drove taxis; his mother Margaret worked in a laundry. He played football as a boy and at 12 enrolled at the Crumlin Boxing Club, where coach Phillip Sutcliffe recognised what he was looking at and put it to work. McGregor began training MMA in his teens at Straight Blast Gym Ireland under John Kavanagh — a relationship that would define both their careers.

His parents, practical about it, persuaded him to take a plumber’s apprenticeship when he finished school. He lasted one year. The story of those years — collecting welfare while his girlfriend Dee Devlin kept the household running, training in the morning and in the evening, staying on a blow-up bed in his mates’ hotel room in Greece because he had no money while they had plenty — was later captured by ESPN in a profile written before the Mayweather fight. His friends from Crumlin remembered the Peugeot 206 and the calls from his dad: “Come home. Go back to plumbing.” He didn’t go back. A chess board made from plumber’s fittings — a gift before he left for America — became one of the better-known artefacts of his origin story.

He turned professional in MMA in 2008, compiled a record through Ireland’s Cage Warriors promotion and became its simultaneous featherweight and lightweight champion — the first European fighter to hold titles in two weight classes at once. The UFC signed him in 2013. He knocked out Marcus Brimage in 67 seconds on debut. Two years later, at UFC 194, he knocked out José Aldo in 13 seconds — still the fastest finish in UFC title fight history — to claim the featherweight championship.

“He built the watch collection to match the persona — and the persona was always about making a room understand, immediately, that the rules had changed.”

In November 2016 he moved up in weight and stopped Eddie Alvarez in the second round at UFC 205, becoming the first fighter in UFC history to hold championships in two weight classes simultaneously. After the fight, as he had done after nearly every major win, he marked the moment with a watch. He had predicted he would buy a Patek Philippe when he got past Alvarez — and he did, a Nautilus 5980/1R-001 in 18k rose gold with a black dial. John Kavanagh once observed that McGregor buys a watch, and within a week it’s sitting in a box and he doesn’t look at it again. That’s not a slight — it’s a portrait of a man for whom each watch represented a moment already passed, and the next challenge was the only thing that mattered.

In 2017, he crossed over into boxing to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. — the undefeated five-weight world champion and widely considered the greatest defensive boxer alive. McGregor lost in the tenth round on a technical knockout, having survived longer than most experts predicted. He earned over $100 million from the bout, which became the second highest-grossing boxing event in history at that time with 4.3 million pay-per-view buys. In September 2018 he launched Proper No. Twelve Irish whiskey, named after the Dublin 12 postal district. By 2021 he and his partners had sold their majority stake to Proximo Spirits in a deal valued at up to $600 million, with Forbes listing McGregor as the world’s highest-paid athlete of 2020 at $180 million — $150 million of which came from the whiskey sale.

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A Collection Built Fight by Fight

McGregor’s first serious watch — according to watch-following sites that tracked his appearances — was a Rolex Sky-Dweller in solid yellow gold, reportedly gifted to him by former UFC owner Lorenzo Fertitta in 2013 as the organisation signed him. That single piece established the trajectory. From there the collection grew systematically: Rolex Day-Date in three configurations (rose gold with olive green dial, platinum with ice blue dial, yellow gold with champagne dial), Rolex Daytona in yellow gold with green dial, multiple Sky-Dwellers, an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Chronograph, the Patek Philippe Nautilus 5980/1R purchased after the Alvarez fight, Patek Philippe World Time, Calatrava in Celtic enamel, and eventually reaching into Jacob & Co.’s most theatrical territory — including the Astronomia Casino at $620,000 with a working miniature roulette wheel inside the case.

The Franck Muller Vanguard with diamond bezel sits in a different register from those pieces — not the institutional prestige of Patek, not the sports-luxury establishment of Rolex or AP, but the avant-garde flamboyance of a brand that decided in 1991 that horology didn’t have to look like it always had. The Vanguard’s tonneau case with integrated strap, its bold over-scaled Arabic numerals in colour, and the diamond-set bezel are design choices that refuse to be subtle. On McGregor, that reads as entirely consistent.

The “Master of Complications” and the Notorious One

Franck Muller — the brand — lists its celebrity wearers as a point of identity. The Wikipedia entry on the company names Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elton John, Cristiano Ronaldo, David Beckham, Kanye West, Conor McGregor, Floyd Mayweather, and Paris Hilton in the same breath. That McGregor and Mayweather — two men who made $500 million between them fighting each other — both wear Franck Muller is either a coincidence or a portrait of exactly the audience the brand has cultivated: performers of extraordinary ability who wear their success as an outward fact rather than a discreet one.

The Vanguard was described by one watch publication as the natural choice for McGregor because it was “designed with sporting efficiency in mind” — the integrated build, the curved case, the streamlined profile. That’s one reading. The other is simpler: Conor McGregor came from a neighbourhood in Dublin 12 where his closest friends had money from dealing and he had none. He chose a different route. By the time he was wearing a diamond-bezel Franck Muller on his wrist, the name of his whiskey was named after that same postal code — Dublin 12, Proper No. Twelve — and the watch was a reminder of how far the route had taken him.

Why this watch, on this wrist?

Actor, Comedian, Voice Artist & Co-Host — SmartLess Podcast

Will Arnett’s Rolex Submariner: The Voice Behind Gob, BoJack, and Batman Wears the Watch That Doesn’t Need to Explain Itself

Gob Bluth in Arrested Development. BoJack Horseman in the Netflix animated series that became one of the most critically celebrated shows of its decade. Batman in The Lego Movie franchise. Seven Emmy nominations. Co-host of SmartLess with Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes. Will Arnett has spent thirty years making iconic things feel effortless. On his wrist: a Rolex Submariner — the watch that operates on exactly the same principle.

Will Arnett — Rolex Submariner on wrist. Source: YouTube

Rolex Submariner — unidirectional bezel, luminous markers, Oyster case

▶ Source: YouTube

William Emerson Arnett was born May 4, 1970, in Toronto, Ontario, and is Canadian-American. He broke through in 2003 with the role of George Oscar “Gob” Bluth II in Fox’s Arrested Development — a self-deluding, perpetually failing magician who is simultaneously the funniest and most tragic figure in the ensemble. The performance earned him his first Emmy nomination and established Arnett as a specific kind of comedian: one who plays characters of grandiose self-image and catastrophic self-awareness simultaneously. He returned for the Netflix revival seasons in 2013 and 2018–19. He also earned Emmy nominations for his recurring role as Devon Banks in 30 Rock (2007–2013), a recurring villain whose menace is rendered entirely through deadpan corporate cold-bloodedness.

From 2014 to 2020, Arnett voiced BoJack Horseman in the Netflix animated series of the same name — a depressed, self-destructive former television star who happens to be a horse, living in a world where humans and anthropomorphic animals coexist. The role earned him three Emmy nominations for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance and is widely regarded as among the finest voice acting performances in the medium’s history. He voiced Batman in The Lego Movie (2014) and its spinoff The Lego Batman Movie (2017), a version of the character played entirely for comedic self-seriousness that became a cultural phenomenon in its own right. His voice — a deep, distinctive baritone that manages to be simultaneously imposing and ridiculous — is one of the most recognisable in the business.

Since 2020, Arnett has co-hosted SmartLess with Arrested Development castmate Jason Bateman and Will & Grace‘s Sean Hayes — a podcast whose format places one host’s mystery guest in front of two cohosts who know nothing about who is coming, forcing rapid improvised response to whoever walks through the door. The show went on a live tour, produced a docuseries on Max, and became one of the most listened-to podcasts in the world. His most recent film, Is This Thing On? (2025), which he co-wrote with Mark Chappell, is directed by longtime friend Bradley Cooper and represents a turn toward dramatic material — a man navigating divorce and middle age who finds refuge in stand-up comedy. Cooper also co-stars.

“From playing Gob Bluth, a failed magician, in Arrested Development to voicing the title character in BoJack Horseman — his career is usually about making people laugh.” — W Magazine, on Will Arnett, January 2026

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The Instrument and the Performance

Will Arnett’s most discussed professional asset is his voice — a deep baritone that has been described as simultaneously authoritative and absurd, capable of lending gravitas to a Lego superhero and tragedy to a fictional horse in the same register. The voice is the same instrument across all these roles. What changes is the context, and what is remarkable is that the instrument holds across all of them — comic, dramatic, animated, live-action — without the audience ever losing the sense that this is Will Arnett, being entirely himself, inside whatever character the production has placed him.

The Rolex Submariner is, in its own category, exactly that kind of instrument. The design is the same design it has been since 1953 — modified in detail, improved in movement and materials, but recognisable as itself across every decade of production. It functions in every context without adapting to any of them. It is itself in a boardroom, on a yacht, at a comedy podcast recording, and on a film set, and it is never wrong in any of those places. The Submariner on Arnett’s wrist is not chosen to complement a particular outfit or occasion. It is there because it is always correct. He operates on the same principle.

The Watch for Someone Who Has Voiced Batman

There is something appropriate about Will Arnett — who has voiced Batman in three films and a video game, and whose interpretation of the character became a cultural meme — wearing a Rolex Submariner. Batman, in Arnett’s version, wore his watch of cultural authority while being comically oblivious to his own self-importance. The Submariner is the watch that carries decades of cinematic authority — it is the watch associated with competence, capability, and quiet confidence — and it sits on Arnett’s wrist with the same effortlessness he brought to making a Lego caped crusader one of the most beloved versions of the character in recent memory. The watch doesn’t need to announce itself. Neither does he.

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More Rolex Submariner Spots on Spot.Watch

• Jeff Saturday (ESPN Get Up) — Rolex Submariner
• Jack Selby — Rolex Submariner
• Brian Simpson — Rolex Submariner
• Jerome Powell — Rolex Submariner
• Shane Gillis — Rolex Submariner
• Ryan Clark (Monday Night Football) — Rolex Submariner
• Henry Cejudo — Rolex Submariner
• Mark Consuelos — Rolex Submariner
• Adam Devine — Rolex Submariner
• Will Arnett (Agree to Disagree) — Rolex Submariner
• Graham Stephan — Rolex Datejust & Submariner Date

Why this watch, on this wrist?

Stand-Up Comedian, Podcaster & Independent Media Operator — Flagrant | Brilliant Idiots

Andrew Schulz’s Rolex Daytona: Comedy’s Most Independent Operator Wears the Watch He Earned Himself

He turned down Netflix deals to self-distribute his specials. He sold out Madison Square Garden independently — no network, no label, no infrastructure he didn’t build himself. He co-hosts Flagrant with Akaash Singh and Brilliant Idiots with Charlamagne tha God, two of the most listened-to comedy podcasts in the country. He built his following from the ground up through crowd work clips, YouTube, and a refusal to let a streaming platform own his catalogue. Andrew Schulz runs comedy like a business. The Rolex Cosmograph Daytona on his wrist is the receipt.

Andrew Schulz — Rolex Cosmograph Daytona on wrist. Source: YouTube

Rolex Cosmograph Daytona — tachymetric bezel, three-register chronograph, Calibre 4131

▶ Source: YouTube

Andrew Schulz was born in New York City and built his comedy career through the clubs and the internet simultaneously — an unusual dual-track approach that gave him a live performance foundation and a digital audience before either had fully validated the other. He gained early online traction through crowd work clips: short videos of unscripted audience interaction that demonstrated a specific kind of improvisational confidence — the ability to read a room, escalate a bit in real time, and land without a net. The clips spread organically, building a following that was his rather than a platform’s.

The business model he has built around that following is the most discussed in contemporary stand-up. When Netflix offered a deal for his 2022 special Infamous, Schulz declined and self-distributed instead — selling directly to audiences, retaining ownership of the content, and demonstrating that a comedian with sufficient audience relationship could bypass the streaming infrastructure entirely. The special was financially successful and attracted attention across the industry not because it broke records, but because it proved the model worked. He has continued self-distributing, touring extensively, and expanding the podcast portfolio. Flagrant with Akaash Singh covers sports, culture, and comedy from a New York perspective; Brilliant Idiots with Charlamagne tha God has run since 2013 and built one of the most loyal audiences in the podcast space. He has sold out Madison Square Garden on his own paper.

“Known for his edgy, crowd-work-heavy style — he has released self-produced specials and tours extensively.” — On Andrew Schulz’s career

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Own Your Catalogue

The most discussed business decision of Andrew Schulz’s career is the Netflix rejection — declining a streaming deal for Infamous and self-distributing instead, retaining ownership and the direct relationship with his audience. The decision attracted attention because it went against the conventional wisdom of what a comedian at his level should do: accept the platform deal, gain the exposure, cash the cheque. Schulz’s argument was that the platform deal trades long-term ownership for short-term distribution, and that a comedian with a large enough direct audience doesn’t need a platform to reach them.

The Rolex Daytona was, for much of its early history, the watch that Rolex could not sell at retail — dealers returned stock, customers weren’t interested, and the reference sat in cases while sportier Rolex pieces moved faster. The people who bought them anyway — because they understood what the movement and the construction represented, independent of the market’s current opinion — built the foundation of the secondary market that eventually recognised the Daytona as the benchmark chronograph in the category. Schulz’s approach to his career and the Daytona’s trajectory share the same underlying logic: own what you build, don’t let the market’s current consensus determine your valuation, and wait for the audience to catch up. The audience, in both cases, has caught up.

The New York Comedian’s Watch

Schulz is a New York comedian in the deepest sense — his crowd work depends on reading the specific people in front of him, the references that land in a room at a particular moment, the energy of a specific city at a specific point in time. New York comedy is not a recorded product. It is a live negotiation between performer and audience, and the performer has to win it in real time with no script and no safety net. Selling out Madison Square Garden on independent paper — without a network’s promotional machinery behind the ticket sale — is the arena version of that negotiation: you have to have built enough direct trust with enough people that they show up without being told to by an algorithm. The Daytona is, among New York’s self-made creative class, the watch that signals exactly that kind of independent arrival. Schulz wears it correctly.

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More Rolex Daytona Spots on Spot.Watch

• Georges St-Pierre — Gold Rolex Daytona
• Watch Drop Wednesday — April 15, 2026
• Robert Herjavec — Rolex Daytona
• Tom Brady — Rolex Daytona
• Andrew Schulz — Rolex Daytona
• Carlos Alcaraz — Rolex Daytona Gold Cosmograph
• Hoyt McGarity — Rolex Daytona Panda
• Joe Lonsdale — Rolex Daytona
• Matt Friend — Rolex Daytona
• Jason Bateman & Jennifer Aniston — Rolex Daytona
• Tom Segura — Rolex Daytona
• Kristi Noem — Rolex Gold Daytona

Why this watch, on this wrist?

President & CEO — TaylorMade Golf Company

David Abeles’s TAG Heuer Carrera: The CEO of TaylorMade Wears the Racing Chronograph That Shares His Brand’s DNA

He guided TaylorMade Golf through its separation from Adidas, its transition to private equity ownership, and its growth into one of the most technically ambitious equipment brands in the sport — worn by Rory McIlroy, Collin Morikawa, Tiger Woods, and the majority of the world’s top-ranked players at various points. David Abeles has spent decades in the sports industry building the kind of performance-first brand identity that wins on Tour before it wins at retail. On his wrist: a TAG Heuer Carrera Calibre 1887 — 43mm, stainless steel, racing-inspired, engineered around an in-house automatic chronograph movement. The same philosophy applied to a watch.

David Abeles — TAG Heuer Carrera Calibre 1887 on wrist. Source: YouTube

TAG Heuer Carrera Calibre 1887 — 43mm stainless steel, in-house automatic chronograph, tachymeter bezel

▶ Source: YouTube

David Abeles has been a senior executive in the sports industry since the late 1990s, building a career that has tracked the evolution of golf equipment from the steel shaft era through the current generation of carbon composite, artificial intelligence-designed club faces and personalised fitting protocols. He joined TaylorMade in a leadership capacity during the years when the brand was synonymous with driver innovation — the metalwood revolution that TaylorMade had pioneered from its founding in 1979 — and has served as President and CEO through two of the most significant corporate transitions in the company’s history.

The first was the separation from Adidas in 2017, when the German sporting goods giant sold TaylorMade to KPS Capital Partners in a private equity transaction valued at approximately $425 million — ending a nineteen-year ownership relationship and giving TaylorMade the operational independence to pursue a more focused, golf-specific strategy. The second was the subsequent growth under private equity that positioned TaylorMade as arguably the most Tour-validated equipment brand in the game: Rory McIlroy, Collin Morikawa, Tommy Fleetwood, Charley Hull, and a roster of elite players whose equipment choices validate the R&D investment that Abeles has overseen. Tiger Woods maintains an equipment relationship with TaylorMade that includes co-development of product. The brand’s Tour presence — measured in clubs in play, wins accumulated, and majors won — is the public proof of the engineering work done in private.

“Instrumental in guiding TaylorMade through its separation from Adidas and growth under private equity — making it a leading global manufacturer of golf equipment.” — On David Abeles’s leadership of TaylorMade Golf

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Two Brands Built Around the Same Principle

TaylorMade and TAG Heuer share a brand DNA that is not coincidental — both were built on the premise that performance-first engineering, validated in the most demanding competitive environments, is the only credible foundation for a premium consumer product. TaylorMade’s metalwood innovation was validated on the PGA Tour before it sold at retail; its current driver technology is validated by the players who use it in majors before it reaches the public. TAG Heuer’s Carrera was designed for racing drivers who needed a chronograph that worked at speed, and the brand has maintained its Formula One presence for over five decades as the competitive proof of its engineering credentials.

David Abeles runs a company on exactly that principle: the Tour validates the product, and the retail customer buys what the best players in the world trust with their game. The TAG Heuer Carrera Calibre 1887 on his wrist is built on exactly that principle: the in-house movement, the racing heritage, the professional chronograph specification brought to a wrist that understands what performance engineering looks like from the inside. The CEO of TaylorMade wearing the racing watch that shares his brand’s foundational philosophy is the alignment Spot.Watch is here to notice.

Not the Expected Choice

Golf industry executives are, in the Spot.Watch archive, frequently spotted in Rolex — the sport’s official timekeeper and the watch most directly associated with golf’s aspirational culture. David Abeles wearing a TAG Heuer Carrera rather than a Rolex Datejust or Submariner is a departure from that pattern. It suggests a watch chosen for its character rather than its category — the chronograph of the racing driver rather than the status object of the country club. For the CEO of a company whose brand positioning is explicitly performance-first and Tour-validated rather than heritage-and-prestige, this makes sense. TaylorMade is not the conservative choice in golf equipment. Neither is the TAG Heuer Carrera in golf executive watches. The alignment is consistent.

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Why this watch, on this wrist?

Actor & Film Producer — Guardians of the Galaxy | Jurassic World | Parks and Recreation

Chris Pratt’s Hublot Square Bang Unico: Star-Lord Wears the Watch That Broke Hublot’s Own Rules

Andy Dwyer. Star-Lord. Owen Grady. One of Hollywood’s highest-grossing leading men across a remarkable run in the 2010s. Chris Pratt transformed from lovable television ensemble player to billion-dollar franchise anchor in the space of a few years — a career trajectory as bold and unexpected as his watch choice. On his wrist: a Hublot Square Bang Unico — the watch that took Hublot’s established circular language and squared it into something more audacious than anything the brand had done before.

Chris Pratt — Hublot Square Bang Unico on wrist. Source: YouTube

Hublot Square Bang Unico — skeletonised dial, hexagonal bezel screws, integrated rubber strap

▶ Source: YouTube

Christopher Michael Pratt was born June 21, 1979, in Virginia, Minnesota, and grew up in Lake Stevens, Washington. His early career was built on television: he joined the cast of Parks and Recreation in 2009 as Andy Dwyer — originally written as a recurring character, expanded to a series regular, and ultimately one of the most beloved figures in the show’s seven-season run. The performance demonstrated a quality that would define his subsequent blockbuster work: the ability to be genuinely funny and physically committed simultaneously, with a warmth that made even broad comedy feel earned.

The pivot to franchise cinema was as rapid as any in recent Hollywood history. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) made him Star-Lord — the mixtape-carrying, irreverent, surprisingly heroic leader of the MCU’s most unconventional team — and the film became one of the year’s biggest releases. Jurassic World (2015) cast him as Owen Grady opposite Chris Evans’ box-office dominance and made him one of the two or three biggest names in action cinema. The two franchises ran concurrently across the rest of the decade: Guardians Vol. 2 (2017), Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018), Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame (2018, 2019), Guardians Vol. 3 (2023). His films have grossed well over ten billion dollars at the worldwide box office. He married Katherine Schwarzenegger in 2019; they have three children.

The Hublot Square Bang Unico on his wrist sits in a watch category — bold, contemporary, technically elaborate — that aligns with the scale of his post-2014 career. It is not a discreet choice. Neither was casting an affable television comedian as the lead of a Marvel space opera.

“His movies have grossed billions worldwide, making him one of Hollywood’s highest-grossing leading men during his peak years.” — On Chris Pratt’s blockbuster career

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The Square Peg in the Round Hole

Chris Pratt’s career is built on the principle of not fitting where you’d expect. Andy Dwyer is not supposed to be the character audiences remember most from an ensemble comedy about municipal government. Star-Lord is not supposed to be the emotional anchor of a franchise built around characters with names like Rocket Raccoon and Groot. A former gas station attendant and Everett, Washington, everyman is not supposed to become one of the most bankable action stars on the planet. Pratt’s career has proceeded by repeatedly not being what the context suggested, and being significantly better for it.

The Hublot Square Bang is doing exactly the same thing in its own domain. The Big Bang is circular. Hublot’s design language — its bezel screws, its fusion material philosophy, its overall visual grammar — was built around and for a round case. The Square Bang takes all of that and applies it to a geometry the brand had never used, producing something that is simultaneously recognisably Hublot and a departure from everything Hublot had established. It does not fit where you expect a Hublot to fit, and it is more interesting for it. The parallel is not incidental.

The Blockbuster Watch

Hublot has always been the watch of spectacle — bold materials, visible movement architecture, cases that announce themselves before the dial is read. The Square Bang is Hublot at its most committed to that identity: the skeletonised Unico chronograph movement is visible through the dial, the square case gives the hexagonal bezel screws a new geometric context, and the integrated rubber strap ties the whole object together into something that looks like it was designed for a film prop department that was told to make a watch for the lead character of an action franchise. Chris Pratt is that lead character, in multiple franchises, simultaneously. The watch fits the biography with an accuracy that is either deliberate or fortuitous. Spot.Watch is going to note it either way.

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Why this watch, on this wrist?

NFL MVP 1988 — Cincinnati Bengals — CBS Sports Broadcaster — Boomer Esiason Foundation

Boomer Esiason’s Breitling Chronomat B01 42: The MVP’s Watch

Boomer Esiason led the NFL in passing yards and touchdowns in 1988, won the MVP award, reached the Super Bowl, and then built a post-playing career that has outlasted his football one — as a broadcaster, and as the founder of one of the most personally motivated philanthropic organizations in sports. On his wrist: a Breitling Chronomat B01 42, a chronograph built for sustained performance and designed to be worn by people who are always timing something.

Boomer Esiason. Source: Boomer Esiason Foundation / Instagram

Breitling Chronomat B01 42.

▶ Source: Boomer Esiason Foundation / Instagram

Norman Julius Esiason — the nickname “Boomer” arrived before he did, bestowed by his mother in recognition of his activity in the womb — played quarterback for the Cincinnati Bengals from 1984 to 1992, with additional stints in New York and Arizona before retiring in 1997. The 1988 season was his peak in purely statistical terms: he led the entire NFL in passing yards (3,572) and touchdown passes (28), completed 57.5% of his passes, and won the league MVP award. The Bengals reached Super Bowl XXIII that January, losing to the San Francisco 49ers on a last-minute Joe Montana drive — one of the most famous conclusions to a championship game in the sport’s history. Esiason was not the reason Cincinnati lost. He was the reason they were there.

His post-playing career has been substantial in its own right. He joined CBS Sports as a broadcaster and has been a consistent presence in NFL coverage across multiple networks for three decades. But the work that defines the second chapter of Esiason’s public life is the Boomer Esiason Foundation, which he founded after his son Gunnar was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. The Foundation supports CF research, treatment centers, educational scholarships for people living with the disease, and families navigating its financial and emotional demands. Esiason has raised tens of millions of dollars for the cause over the course of more than twenty-five years — a commitment that has continued long after the cameras from the Super Bowl story moved on to other subjects.

NFL MVP. Super Bowl. Thirty years in broadcasting. Twenty-five years building a foundation for his son. The clock has never stopped. — Boomer Esiason’s résumé, read against the chronograph

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The Chronograph and the Quarterback

A quarterback’s entire operational reality is organized around time. The play clock. The game clock. The snap count. The time in the pocket before the pass rush arrives. The window in which a receiver is open before the coverage closes. Esiason played at a level where those calculations happened faster than conscious thought — where the chronometric precision was built into the body rather than tracked on the wrist. The Breitling Chronomat is a watch that was built for an analogous kind of operator: the pilot who needs a reliable chronograph function at altitude, under pressure, in conditions where imprecision has consequences. The B01 movement inside the Chronomat is COSC-certified, meaning it meets the most demanding accuracy standard for a Swiss mechanical movement. On Esiason’s wrist, the accuracy standard is not aspirational. It is a professional baseline.

The Chronomat’s visual character is also correct for Esiason in a way that a more restrained chronograph would not be. This is a bold watch — 42mm, rider tabs on the bezel, three sub-dials on a dial that makes no attempt at minimalism. Esiason was a bold quarterback in a city that had not seen its team in the Super Bowl before he took them there. The watch is proportional to the career.

The Foundation and the Long Game

The Boomer Esiason Foundation is, by any objective measure, the most significant thing Esiason has built. The 1988 MVP season is a fixed point in NFL history — impressive, complete, done. The Foundation is ongoing: fundraisers, scholarships, research grants, family support programs, an annual charity event that has run continuously for more than a quarter century. Gunnar Esiason, who was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis as an infant and given a median life expectancy that the medical advances his father helped fund have since dramatically extended, is now in his thirties and has become an advocate in his own right. The chronograph on Boomer Esiason’s wrist measures elapsed time. The Foundation is the longer timing function — still running, still accumulating, still doing the work the MVP trophy cannot do by itself. At spot.watch, that is always worth noticing.

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More Breitling Spots on Spot.Watch

• Trevor Lawrence — Breitling Avenger GMT
• Matt Leinart — Breitling Superocean Heritage B31
• Charles Woodson — Breitling Flying B
• James Franklin — Breitling Navitimer

Why this watch, on this wrist?

Real Estate Developer & Permitting Expert — Co-Founder & President, Crest Real Estate | Los Angeles

Jason Somers’s Audemars Piguet Royal Oak: The Prince of Permits Wears the Watch That Also Broke Every Rule

Nicknamed the “Prince of Permits” — co-founder and president of Crest Real Estate, the Los Angeles firm that has mastered the art of navigating the city’s most complex municipal codes, baseline hillside ordinances, and entitlement processes to bring ambitious developments to life. Over fifteen years, Jason Somers has shaped thousands of properties across LA, including the restoration of historic John Lautner buildings. On his wrist: an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak self-winding — the watch that, when it was introduced in 1972, broke every rule the Swiss watch industry had about what a luxury watch was supposed to be.

Jason Somers — Audemars Piguet Royal Oak on wrist. Source: YouTube

AP Royal Oak — octagonal bezel, integrated bracelet, tapisserie dial. Source: YouTube

▶ Source: YouTube

Jason Somers is the co-founder and president of Crest Real Estate, a Los Angeles-based firm that has built its reputation on a specific and difficult-to-replicate service: navigating the most complex permitting, entitlement, and project management challenges in one of the most regulated development environments in the United States. The City of Los Angeles — with its layered municipal codes, neighbourhood-specific ordinances, baseline hillside regulations, and Department of Building and Safety processes — is a system that regularly defeats developers who do not have deep institutional knowledge of how it works. Somers has spent fifteen-plus years becoming the person who knows how it works better than almost anyone.

His nickname — the “Prince of Permits” — captures the specific expertise that distinguishes Crest from conventional real estate firms: not the acquisition or sales side of development, but the municipal approval process that determines whether a project is possible at all before a dollar of construction capital is committed. His firm has handled thousands of developments across Los Angeles, including restoration work on buildings designed by John Lautner — the American architect whose biomorphic, futurist residential designs represent some of the most technically and bureaucratically complex structures in the city’s housing stock. Restoring a Lautner building in Los Angeles requires navigating historic designation processes, structural engineering requirements, and planning commission approvals simultaneously, while preserving the design intent of a building that was often ahead of the code when it was built. This is Somers’s domain.

“The Prince of Permits — excelling at navigating complex municipal codes, building regulations, and approvals to bring ambitious projects to life.” — On Jason Somers’s expertise

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The Watch That Ignored the Rules and Won

The Royal Oak succeeded not by working within the rules of Swiss luxury watchmaking but by being so precisely correct in its design that the rules became irrelevant. Steel was not supposed to be used for luxury watches — the Royal Oak made steel the material of choice for luxury sports watches across the industry. Integrated bracelets were not supposed to be possible at this level of finishing — the Royal Oak’s integrated bracelet became the benchmark against which all subsequent integrated bracelet designs are measured. The exposed bezel screws were not supposed to be considered elegant — they became one of the most imitated design elements in watchmaking history. Genta did not comply with what was expected. He made something so correct that expectation had to follow.

Jason Somers operates in a regulatory environment that is, in its own way, a system of rules designed to resist the kind of ambitious development that his clients want to pursue. The baseline hillside ordinance, the grading regulations, the historic preservation requirements, the planning commission approval process — these are not obstacles that the best developers ignore. They are systems that the best developers understand so thoroughly that they can navigate them to outcomes that less-informed participants believe are impossible. The Prince of Permits does not break the rules. He knows them well enough to work through them in ways that produce results others cannot achieve. That is also, on reflection, exactly what the Royal Oak did in 1972.

The LA Developer’s Watch

The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak has become, across the past two decades, the luxury sports watch most closely associated with Los Angeles creative and business culture — the watch of the entertainment executive, the real estate developer, the tech founder, the high-net-worth individual who wants a watch that signals sophistication without broadcasting it in the Rolex idiom. It is the alternative to the Daytona for people who have considered the Daytona and decided they want something with a different vocabulary. For a developer who works in the most architecturally and bureaucratically complex city in the United States, restoring buildings designed by one of the twentieth century’s most visionary architects, the watch whose design vocabulary is itself a work of architectural precision is the correct choice.

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Why this watch, on this wrist?

Luxury Real Estate  ·  The Beverly Hills Estates  ·  Williams & Williams Estates Group

Branden Williams’ Audemars Piguet Royal Oak: The Architecture of Ambition

In a market where homes sell for eight figures before the landscaping is finished, Branden Williams is the man who sets the terms. On his wrist, an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Self-Winding — a watch that, like the properties he trades, was designed to redefine what a price tag is allowed to mean.

Branden Williams. Source: YouTube

Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Self-Winding on the wrist.

▶ Source: YouTube

Branden Williams grew up in Beverly Hills — not as a visitor, not as an aspirant, but as someone for whom the zip code was simply home. That early fluency in the vocabulary of Southern California luxury became the foundation of a career that now defines the top end of the Los Angeles real estate market. Together with his wife and business partner Rayni Williams, he co-founded Williams & Williams Estates Group, operating as The Beverly Hills Estates, a firm that has become the name attached to some of the most significant residential transactions in the city’s history. Williams doesn’t just sell homes in Beverly Hills. He sets the market for what those homes cost.

The properties Williams handles occupy a specific tier of the market — the tier where architecture is the argument. Spec mansions in the Hollywood Hills priced at $38 million. Compound estates in Bel-Air where the listing itself is a press event. Williams is, by training and temperament, an agent who understands that at this price point the transaction is secondary to the story. What is this house? Who built it? What does it say about the person who owns it? Williams has mastered the art of translating physical space into cultural statement, which is a skill that applies equally to the $30,000 watch on the wrist of the man presenting it.

The Royal Oak has been the watch of the Los Angeles luxury real estate world for a generation now — not because agents are told to wear it, but because the watch and the market share the same fundamental logic. Both operate at a price that requires justification and then exceeds it. Both exist in a category that didn’t quite exist before someone decided to create it. And both attract buyers who understand that the most valuable thing in any market is not what something costs, but what it signals about the person who chose it.

“In this business, everything you do communicates something. The car you drive, the way you dress, the watch you wear — it all tells the client who they’re dealing with.” — Branden Williams, The Beverly Hills Estates

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When the Price Is the Statement

The Los Angeles luxury real estate market operates on a logic that the broader market finds difficult to parse. A $38 million spec home in the Hollywood Hills is not priced at $38 million because someone calculated the cost of materials and construction and added a margin. It is priced at $38 million because $38 million is the right number for the story the home is designed to tell — about the neighbourhood, about the architecture, about the person who will own it. Branden Williams understands this instinctively, which is why he has built a career at the apex of a market that rewards this kind of thinking above everything else.

The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak was priced the same way in 1972. The original Jumbo cost more than most gold watches not because the stainless steel justified it mechanically but because Audemars Piguet was making a claim about what the watch was. That audacity, fifty years on, looks like genius. The steel Royal Oak — which retails today at around $24,000 and trades on the secondary market well above that — is the most imitated design in luxury watchmaking, the reference against which every subsequent “luxury sports watch” has been measured. It turned a single night’s sketching by Gérald Genta into a category that now defines the entire upper tier of the watch world.

Why This Watch on This Wrist

Branden Williams operates in spaces where every detail is a signal — where the watch on your wrist tells the client whether you belong in the room before you say a word. The Royal Oak Self-Winding is calibrated for exactly this environment. It is bold enough to command attention at close range — the octagonal bezel, the tapisserie dial, the integrated bracelet are design decisions that don’t negotiate with subtlety — but its language is architectural rather than ostentatious. The man who spent his career understanding that the most expensive properties are distinguished not by their price but by the clarity of their design vision has chosen the watch that made the same argument first. The Royal Oak didn’t follow the luxury market. It created one. On the wrist of the agent who does the same thing in Beverly Hills every day, it is not a coincidence. It is a professional statement, worn on the wrist.

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More Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Spots on Spot.Watch

• Tom Brady — Audemars Piguet Royal Oak
• Tom Brady — Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore
• Brad Gerstner — Audemars Piguet Royal Oak
• Davante Adams — Audemars Piguet Royal Oak
• Jason Somers — Audemars Piguet Royal Oak
• Supercar Ron — Audemars Piguet Royal Oak
• Joe Lonsdale — Audemars Piguet Royal Oak
• Branden Williams — Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Self-Winding

Why this watch, on this wrist?

Actor, Comedian & Co-Creator — Workaholics | The Righteous Gemstones | Pitch Perfect

Adam Devine’s Rolex Submariner: The Man Who Was Hit by a Cement Truck at 11 and Turned It Into a Comedy Career

At age eleven, a 42-ton cement truck struck him, fractured both legs, and required multiple surgeries over two years. He used humour to cope during recovery — and never stopped. Workaholics. Bumper Allen in Pitch Perfect. Kelvin Gemstone in The Righteous Gemstones. Adam Devine built one of the most enduring comedy careers of his generation from the wreckage of a childhood accident. On his wrist: a Rolex Submariner — a watch built to survive conditions that would destroy lesser equipment.

Adam Devine — Rolex Submariner on wrist. Source: YouTube

Rolex Submariner — unidirectional bezel, luminous markers, Oyster case

▶ Source: YouTube

Adam Patrick Devine was born November 7, 1983, in Waterloo, Iowa, and grew up in Omaha, Nebraska. At age eleven, he was struck by a 42-ton cement truck — an accident that fractured both legs and required multiple surgeries over the following two years, with health complications that have continued into adulthood. By his own account, he used humour as a coping mechanism throughout the long recovery. It is the origin story of the entire career. He graduated from Millard South High School in 2002, attended Orange Coast College in California — where he met future collaborators Blake Anderson and others — and went on to study at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco before moving to Los Angeles.

In 2006, Devine and friends Kyle Newacheck, Anders Holm, and Blake Anderson formed Mail Order Comedy, a sketch-comedy group that built its audience through YouTube and Myspace before Comedy Central offered them a series. The result was Workaholics (2011–2017), which Devine co-created, co-wrote, executive produced, and starred in for seven seasons — ending as one of Comedy Central’s most successful programmes. Around the same time, Elizabeth Banks approached him to audition for Pitch Perfect. He was cast as Bumper Allen, the arrogant rival a cappella conductor, winning a Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie Villain and reprising the role across two sequels and the Peacock series Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin. He had a recurring role as Andy Bailey on Modern Family from 2014 to 2016 and appeared in a string of films including Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, The Lego Batman Movie (as The Flash), and Isn’t It Romantic.

From 2019 to 2025, he starred as Kelvin Gemstone in the HBO comedy series The Righteous Gemstones alongside John Goodman, Danny McBride, and Edi Patterson — playing the youngest, most chaotically unformed member of a televangelist dynasty with a physical commitment and emotional specificity that earned some of the best reviews of his career. He is married to actress Chloe Bridges, whom he met on the set of The Final Girls. He also competes regularly in stand-up comedy, having performed at the Montreal Comedy Festival at age 22.

“An early interest in comedy sparked after a childhood accident, where he used humor to cope with recovery.” — On the origins of Adam Devine’s comedy career

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Built to Take It

The Rolex Submariner was engineered around one non-negotiable requirement: it must keep working in conditions that destroy unprotected equipment. That requirement has been constant since 1953 through every movement update and case refinement. The bezel turns only one direction because error in a dive environment is not recoverable. The crown locks down because water finds any gap. The movement is certified accurate because a few seconds per day compounds over a career into something meaningful. The Submariner does not break. It absorbs what is asked of it — pressure, impact, salt water, decades of daily wear — and continues to run.

Adam Devine was eleven when a cement truck hit him. He spent two years in surgery and has managed related health complications since. He turned the experience into fuel for a career spanning sketch television, musical comedy films, network sitcoms, animated features, and acclaimed HBO drama. The Submariner on his wrist is the watch that does not break — which, on the wrist of someone who has taken more than most people and kept going, is the watch that fits.

From YouTube to HBO

The career trajectory is, on paper, improbable. A kid from Omaha who survived a cement truck strike starts posting sketch videos with three friends in 2006. Comedy Central calls. Seven seasons of Workaholics. Elizabeth Banks casts him as a villain in a musical comedy that becomes a franchise. John Goodman and Danny McBride cast him in The Righteous Gemstones, where his physical commitment to Kelvin Gemstone — a grown man in the permanent grip of arrested development — earned the best critical reception of his career. The Rolex Submariner was designed for people who go into environments most people don’t and need the equipment on their wrist to work correctly when it matters. The Devine career has operated on exactly that principle. Every time it counted, the thing worked.

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More Rolex Submariner Spots on Spot.Watch

• Jeff Saturday (ESPN Get Up) — Rolex Submariner
• Jack Selby — Rolex Submariner
• Brian Simpson — Rolex Submariner
• Jerome Powell — Rolex Submariner
• Shane Gillis — Rolex Submariner
• Ryan Clark (Monday Night Football) — Rolex Submariner
• Henry Cejudo — Rolex Submariner
• Mark Consuelos — Rolex Submariner
• Adam Devine — Rolex Submariner
• Will Arnett (Agree to Disagree) — Rolex Submariner
• Graham Stephan — Rolex Datejust & Submariner Date

Why this watch, on this wrist?