Netflix is finally putting its money where its podcasting mouth is.
According to a report from Front Office Sports’ Ryan Glasspiegel on Thursday, Netflix’s multiyear deal with Barstool Sports is worth “in the eight figures” annually.
The deal announced this week shifts video distribution for Pardon My Take, Spittin’ Chiclets, and The Ryen Russillo Show away from YouTube and onto Netflix beginning next month. Audio episodes stay put on Spotify and Apple Podcasts at no cost to listeners.
Netflix’s Barstool deal follows its recently announced partnership with Spotify that will bring several podcasts from The Ringer to the platform, including The Bill Simmons Podcast and The Zach Lowe Show. The streaming giant is clearly betting big on becoming a destination for sports podcast video content.
Meanwhile, Dave Portnoy has defended the Netflix move against criticism that the shows are “selling out” by moving behind what some view as a paywall. In a lengthy response on social media, he emphasized that Big Cat and PFT Commenter have remained loyal to Barstool and turned down bigger offers elsewhere, and noted that the money from the Netflix deal helps support the broader Barstool operation.
The defense makes sense from Barstool’s perspective, but it sidesteps the real risk in this deal. Can these shows hold their audiences on a subscription platform? YouTube’s algorithm and zero barrier to entry built these podcasts into what they are. Pardon My Take clips rack up hundreds of thousands of views because anyone can click and watch. Netflix has nearly 90 million subscribers in the U.S. and Canada, sure, but it’s a fundamentally different proposition. You can’t easily share a Netflix clip. The discovery engine doesn’t work the same way. And asking people to pay $15 a month to watch something they used to get for free is a hell of a test.
Netflix appears confident that established podcast fanbases will either follow their shows to the new platform or already count themselves among subscribers. They’re spending eight figures annually to test that theory with Barstool, and presumably comparable amounts on their other podcast acquisitions.
January will show whether Netflix can actually build a meaningful podcast viewership business or if they’ve just created an expensive content library that sits behind a paywall most podcast fans won’t cross.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.