One of the big moves in podcasting recently has been the growth of networks, which bring together groups of individual podcasts for sponsorships, advertising, brand connections, and more. A new move there sees two networks partnering up, with those being Bleav and The Hockey Podcast Network.
Both Bleav and THPN started in 2019, and both have grown significantly since then. Bleav has more than 500 shows across a range of sports and lifestyle properties, while THPN has more than 65 hockey podcasts, including at least one for every NHL team. Bleav president Eric Weinberger told AA, “We love the NHL at Bleav and are thrilled to partner with The Hockey Podcast Network. [THPN owner] Dylan [Keyzer] and [senior director of operations] Kyle have built a great slate of shows for hockey fans—we look forward to helping develop, distribute, and sell for this amazing network.”
Keyzer spoke to AA about the growth of the network, saying that it came out of experiences he had trying to grow his own podcast on the sponsorship side.
“I had a podcast with a friend of mine, and a local radio show, in Nanaimo,” he said. “We ran it for about two years, mostly covering the Vancouver Canucks, and we sold a couple small sponsorships here and there. But we really looked at it like ‘If we’re having this problem, and we’re creating good content and putting up pretty good numbers, but having trouble getting sponsors, what’s the solution?’ And we figured ‘Well, there must be guys like us in every NHL market that create good content but just can’t get over that next step.'”
Keyzer said a network gave them the opportunity to offer advertisers more scale.
“We figured what we’d do was combine all these creators and podcasters into one network. That way, our power is in numbers.”
And he said working with Bleav gives them the chance to do that on an even larger scale.
“We’ve known about Bleav for quite a while, they’ve made a great mark in the podcast space. And when they reached out to us about six months ago, we really took a deeper dive at what Bleav was doing. What really stood out to me was they were doing a lot of the same things we were doing. They were mainly focused on the more typical American sports, baseball, football, basketball, but what we liked was that they would bring on shows and they would let shows do their thing.”
Keyzer said it was vital in this partnership that Bleav would allow THPN hosts creative freedom.
“That was one of the big things for us, making sure our podcasters had creative control and they could make the type of content that they think’s going to work well. Different styles and content work well in different areas of the country, so we wanted to put the faith in our creators that they were going to put out the right product. And it seems that’s really what Bleav does, so that’s one of the reasons we thought it would be a good fit.”
He said it also seemed like a good pairing considering that Bleav had some hockey content before this, but not as much as they had in other sports.
“We noticed that Bleav had a bit of a gap in their hockey podcast section. They had some great shows already, but the number of shows compared to the [more typical] American sports was lower. So it seemed like a really natural fit for us; we can help Bleav shore up their hockey content and Bleav can help us with their programmatic ads and their sponsorships and that side of the business.”
How did THPN go from one podcast to its own network to this Bleav partnership? Keyzer said this started with research into what podcasts were out there in each NHL market, and which ones might be a fit for THPN.
“It started off as just a hobby for me and my friend and kind of grew from there,” he said. “What we did was we just wrote down a list of every NHL market, and then we would start doing research and recruiting. So we would go with, let’s say, Pittsburgh, we’d research all the Pittsburgh Penguins’ podcasts.
“And we’d bring on some guys, we didn’t necessarily bring on the biggest shows, but we brought on shows where we could tell that the creators really, at the end of the day, cared about the team and about making the content and would be willing to work with a startup network like ours.”
Keyzer said at the start, they had to build the network without already having financial backing in place, and that required trust from the people they reached out to.
“When we started, we had no money essentially,” he said. “We’d approach these guys saying ‘Hey, have faith in us, have faith in the group, and we can make something of it.’ And that’s kind of what ended up happening.”
But they were still able to put together a lineup covering the full NHL for their launch.
“We spent most of a year, I would say six to eight months, just doing recruiting, research, chatting with all these different hosts and writers from these different markets. Eventually, we were able to get our 32-man roster together and set for launch in 2019, and the rest is history.”
There are often questions with the NHL about the levels of fandom in some newer-to-hockey markets, but Keyzer said THPN was pleasantly surprised with the number of talented podcasters out there in those markets.
“We found there were a lot of content creators in even non-traditional markets. It’s actually something that was a pleasant surprise for us.”
It wasn’t always smooth sailing, though. Keyzer said an early challenge was that some of their first sponsors were focused in on particular geographic regions, and the network didn’t necessarily have the numbers of listeners needed in that tight of an area at that point.
“There were some growing pains. We came across a lot of sponsors that wanted to target specific regions and areas. In some cases we were able to do that, and in some cases we weren’t. There were a lot of markets, particularly at the start, where guys were starting out podcasts and slowly growing their numbers, but their numbers weren’t really reflective of a big spend from a sponsor. So we’ve had some hurdles as far as that went.”
He said in more recent times, though, their sponsorship has been more from companies with a presence across North America.
“The last couple of years, we’ve been able to partner with more cross-continent sponsors like Gametime and DraftKings that have been established throughout Canada and the U.S.,” Keyzer said. “Those are typically the sponsors that we work with, and that we’ve found work well with our hosts and the type of content that they want to make. …We’ve picked up some great sponsors over the past few years that have really helped propel us.”
Keyzer thinks there’s a large growth opportunity in hockey, especially in U.S. markets.
“I think hockey is definitely growing in the United States. It’s already made its mark, obviously, in Canada. I think hockey will probably always hold that spot below baseball, football, and basketball, but for us, it’s such a diehard sport, and people are so passionate about it.”
And he said that fan passion hasn’t always been reflected in the amount of quality content made about hockey.
“When we were creating the network, what we noticed was a gap in hockey content. There’s plenty of basketball networks and other networks covering the main American sports, but we felt like if we focus on this one quote-unquote niche sport of hockey, we can make our mark focusing on that. At the end of the day, I think it’s a great addition for Bleav to further expand their reach and make sure they’re giving the sport of ice hockey respect as far as how much content is coming out, and the quality as well.”
Keyzer said the media content on hockey is rising, and so is the importance of mainstream media places on podcasts. He said that comes with pros and cons, but a nice part of it is that it helps establish podcasting as a whole more.
“In the last few years, you’ve seen a lot more of the mainstream media companies pay attention to podcasting, and you’ve had so many of these independent networks come up and make a go of it and be successful. So now you’re getting the Sportsnets of the world, the ESPNs, they’re starting to get more into the podcast game, which is positive in some ways, but for independent creators, sometimes it can make things a little more difficult.
“But I think the positive side of it is it’s bringing podcasts more into the mainstream. Podcasting isn’t necessarily a side piece of media anymore; it’s a part of your almost-daily routine.”
He said another key part of what makes podcasting work well is the way podcast content can be used across platforms, especially if it comes from a video podcast.
“There’s quite a few of our podcasts that do video content. I think one of the main reasons we’re seeing that is that podcasting is a perfect vessel to get you into every other platform.
“If you’re doing a video podcast, out of that one piece of content, you have audio for Apple Podcasts and Spotify, you have long-form video content for YouTube, you can cut up that video content into TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts, etc. Even outside of sports, I think that’s why more people are leaning to the podcast side, because you can get so much content out of one recording.”
Overall, Keyzer said the network’s goal was to try and empower fan creators. And he thinks this Bleav partnership will help them do that even further.
“Really at the end of the day, it was just about giving creators a voice and giving creators an opportunity that wasn’t necessarily there. Obviously it’s tough to break into traditional stuff, but we wanted to give diehard fans, people that really care about the sport, we wanted to give them a platform.”
