Gregg Giannotti not buying Kylie Kelce’s podcast beating Joe Rogan’s

Apple and Spotify claim Kylie Kelce’s new podcast has unseated Joe Rogan’s on the charts after just one episode, but others aren’t sure.

The wife of Jason Kelce and sister-in-law of Travis Kelce launched her podcast Not Gonna Lie last week. And not only is it already doing better than the Kelce brothers’ New Heights podcast, but according to Apple and Spotify it also dethroned The Joe Rogan Experience’s deep-seated position as the most-listened to podcast on their platforms.

Kylie Kelce’s debut episode was released Dec. 5 and featured It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia star Kaitlin Olson as a guest. And on Tuesday, WFAN’s morning show with Boomer Esiason and Gregg Giannotti questioned a conversation between Kelce and Olson being able to unseat Rogan’s podcast.

“If you look at any of the Joe Rogan YouTube numbers…Kylie Kelce has a more listened to podcast than Joe Rogan?” – Gregg Giannotti is skeptical. pic.twitter.com/EEf6d6mDKz

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) December 10, 2024

“I honestly wasn’t even going to bring it up because I thought it was so ridiculous that Spotify would actually say that,” Giannotti said after a caller questioned the news. “I mean, there’s just no way.”

“If you look at any of the Joe Rogan YouTube numbers and compare that to whatever the Kelces are doing,” Giannotti continued. “Come on. Kylie Kelce has a more listened to podcast than Joe Rogan? I mean Joe Rogan essentially influenced the election in some way…and Kylie Kelce, I didn’t even know she had a podcast.”

The Kelce name has enjoyed increased fame over the last 15 months or so thanks to Taylor Swift’s romance with Travis Kelce. It helped bring New Heights to new heights and surely, it helped bring added attention to Kylie Kelce’s debut in the podcast space. But beating Rogan?

WFAN’s morning show producer Al Dukes noted the disparity in YouTube numbers on some of Rogan’s podcasts compared to Kelce’s debut episode. Rogan’s episode with Donald Trump in October, for example, amassed nearly 40 million views in three days. Kelce’s Not Gonna Lie debut episode is at 624,000 views in five days. Which everyone on WFAN’s morning show was quick to note is an impressive debut, but it’s not indicative of getting more listens than Rogan’s podcast.

“But how do they claim…I mean, 35 million to 600,000. Why are they doing that?” Giannotti asked.

Trump is an outlier. Obviously a Rogan-Trump episode one week before Election Day was going to do massive numbers. But even Rogan’s five-day-old episode with Derek from More Plates More Dates has over one million views.

Ratings in radio are a big deal. But in podcasting, there’s very little transparency surrounding a show’s listenership. Maybe Kelce’s podcast legitimately topped Rogan’s after just one episode. And if it did achieve that seemingly unattainable feat, then Not Gonna Lie probably deserves even more praise than it’s receiving.

[WFAN]