Sports podcasting company Blue Wire continues to grow, and their latest move sees them adding podcasts from The Miami Herald and The Kansas City Star to their network. As part of a deal with McClatchy, the parent company of those papers, Blue Wire will now sell ads for six Herald podcasts and one from the Star. From the Herald, that list includes The Greg Cote Show, Herald Sports, Dolphins in Depth, Heat Check, Eye on the U, and Fish Bytes, and from the Star, that’s SportsBeat KC. Blue Wire founder and CEO Kevin Jones spoke to AA via email about this deal Wednesday, and said this adds to the numbers of journalists they already have on their network.
“We love that our content is a mix of fans and journalists,” Jones said. “We have three beat reporters—Chris Biderman from The Sacramento Bee, Nicole Yang from The Boston Globe and Sarah Todd from The Deseret News on the network. Then lots of our best podcasts are from fans of the Lakers, Yankees, Warriors, Arsenal. We think a blended approach to our voices gives us a breadth that’s different than our competition like The Athletic or The Ringer. The Miami Herald and The Kansas City Star add to our journalistic credibility.”
This particular partnership is the second one Blue Wire has struck with a newspaper company. Their first was with The Las Vegas Review-Journal, and that partnership is now more than a year old. Jones said, from his perspective, that deal has worked out well for both sides.
”We have been working with the Review-Journal since November of 2020. It’s a solid relationship. Their collection of podcasts rank in the mid-tier of our 225. Their audience has grown, without question. They’ve used some of the tactics we’ve taught them to improve their audio content—record length, days to record, promotion on other adjacent podcasts across Blue Wire. [The paper] still has the ability to sell sponsorships, but most of the ad inventory is coming from us. ”
Jones said another aspect of this new deal is that it shows off Blue Wire’s appeal as a destination for established podcasts, not just new ones.
“We are constantly looking to strengthen our portfolio of podcasts with existing sports podcasts. We love existing podcasts who record regularly but are under monetized. We are the place for you. Advertisers are starting to regularly tap into Blue Wire for our scale as we hit 10M monthly downloads. We have started to compare Blue Wire to Reddit for sports media with advertising agencies, and the light bulb goes off as to why 225 podcasts together are valuable. ”
And he said he would love to hear from other newspapers interested in working with Blue Wire on their podcasts.
“This is an open PSA to other newspaper sports sections. We can make more money for your podcasts then you currently can. We can provide cross-promotions in other markets. Let’s talk.”