YouTube Is Swallowing the Sports Podcast Star
New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce lived up to its name in its first season. Before the brothers faced off in the Super Bowl, their show reached No. 1 overall on Apple’s charts. Produced by Wave Sports + Entertainment (WSE), it was 2022’s breakout sports podcast … If you can call it a podcast.
“Outside Wave, everyone just calls it a podcast, and that’s fine,” WSE EVP for content and strategy Mack Sovereign said. “We like to refer to it as a digital series, because we put a lot of work into programming the video side.”
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Among eight media companies vying for the Kelces last year, WSE pitched its social smarts (WSE started as a creator of viral content on platforms like Instagram and Snapchat) as a key lever in growing a new show—an increasingly difficult task these days. And it worked. Since launching in September, New Heights has added more than 2 million followers across its channels—not including its core podcast following.
The Kelces’ show exemplifies how podcasts are actually still growing, despite the emerging narrative of a podcast industry faltering amid show cancellations, budget cuts and layoffs. There will likely be more shows in 2023 than ever before, more listeners, and more advertisers. Podcast ad spending is expected to eclipse $2 billion this year, according to eMarketer, tripling the 2019 total.
“It’s been, one, sort of puzzling,” iHeartPodcast Network president Will Pearson said about the rumblings of podcasting’s struggles, “and, two, it can be a little bit frustrating.”
That said, the industry is changing—dramatically. The types of shows getting greenlit have evolved, as have the ways current shows grow and monetize, according to the eight industry executives Sportico spoke with.
Take Matthew Berry, for example. After moving from ESPN to NBC, his show, Fantasy Football Happy Hour, is now available in podcast players and on YouTube. And on social platforms. And on Peacock. And on SiriusXM, across two different channels.
“Podcasting remains incredibly important to me,” he said. But, he added, “It’s pretty spread out evenly [across platforms] in terms of how people consume the show.”
Increasingly, active athletes are competing with Berry for audience attention. Will Compton and Taylor Lewan’s Bussin’ With The Boys sits two spots behind New Heights among top football podcasts, according to Chartable data. In the NBA, J.J. Redick became the first active player to launch a regular show in 2016. Draymond Green and CJ McCollum have followed his footsteps. Philadelphia 76er Tyrese Maxey just launched his own show less than three years after entering the league.
And when it comes to athlete podcasts, Omaha Productions audio head Richelle Markazene doesn’t “think we’ve hit the saturation mark just yet.” Omaha announced its first full podcast slate in partnership with ESPN last June, anchoring its NFL coverage around a new show hosted by Pittsburgh Steelers defensive tackle Cam Heyward.
The different ways podcasts find an audience—and make money from them—explains networks’ continued desire to add players to their roster.
There are basically two keys to growing a show from scratch these days, and the most obvious is having a host with a built-in fanbase. Sometimes, that’s literally a team’s followers eager to get an inside perspective on the franchise. Other times, it’s someone with a substantial social media following and high search traffic.
“You’re basically throwing a new piece of content into a sea of content, so you need something to differentiate it,” said Andrew Samson, executive producer for The Volume network, which was founded by Colin Cowherd. “Having that popular… and that recognizable name is a huge benefit. It is like a lighthouse in the ocean.”
Blue Wire CEO Kevin Jones, who oversees a network of more than 300 shows, put it more succinctly: “We rarely see anyone without a big Twitter presence do well in sports [podcasts].”
Beyond having the established fanbase of a brand name, another necessity to help growth is having an existing network of shows through which to promote each new one. For example, each new show on The Ringer’s podcast network can be promoted on its existing, already-popular shows, such as The Bill Simmons Show.
“Think of it like a planet with its orbits,” Meadowlark Media chief operating officer Bimal Kapadia said. For him, The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz might as well be the sun. “The biggest comparative advantage that we have … is that Dan has a very loyal audience.”
Once you’ve broken through, the second hit becomes that much easier. iHeart offers the biggest proof of the model, using more than $100 million worth of radio ad time to run promotions for its own shows and partner shows.
Athletes also help networks close ad deals, as the industry moves from direct response marketing (your mattress and toothbrush mainstays of old) to bigger brand deals with beer and credit card companies. Here again, content on video platforms helps, with ad sellers bundling total audience metrics when pitching marketers.
“We’re telling everyone they should be on YouTube,” Jones said. “If you’re going to be a podcaster for years and years, you need to just get there now.”
YouTube offers a recommendation algorithm that helps shows find new audiences, and it has a monetization system set up to shorten the path to profitability. New YouTube lead Neal Mohan recently cited research that the platform “is now the second most popular destination for listening to podcasts” with new podcast-specific features coming soon. Recording video content also makes it easier to post clips and go viral elsewhere.
“We’re looking at both sides,” Markazene said. “What personalities will break through on audio? Will they also break through in the digital space?”
A model for success has coalesced: big name hosts on existing networks chatting regularly and distributed in all sorts of formats. Theoretical questions about when a “podcast” is no longer a podcast can wait for another day.
Alternative strategies, meanwhile, have floundered. Spotify is rethinking its strategy of buying podcasts to air exclusively on its service. Live audio, a common buzzword following Clubhouse’s $4 billion valuation in 2021 and the launches of competitors like Twitter Spaces and Amazon’s Amp, still remains in its infancy.
Limited-run, narrative podcasts are also harder to come by. Blue Wire recently paused its investment in the category, while Tom Brady and Michael Strahan’s Religion of Sports folded its audio division entirely after betting on storytellers.
“We would love to expand,” Markazene said. “But we will do it cautiously.” For now, the focus is on growing Omaha’s existing shows, on whichever platform performs best.
(This story has been updated in the third paragraph to clarify the abbreviated name of Wave Sports + Entertainment. Additionally, this story has been updated in the first paragraph to accurately reflect New Heights‘ ranking.)
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