Throughout its history, Playmaker has consistently punched above its weight.
The network behind podcasts from stars like Shaquille O’Neal and Jalen Brunson has, under new CEO Dave Katzman, recently expanded to bring in more top-level talent and wants to lead the way in reimagining the industry’s push to expand beyond the confines of podcasting and recreate the talk show format entirely.
“I feel like the podcast space is transforming just into the digital content space,” Katzman told Awful Announcing this week. “Which means you can have what people think of as a traditional podcast, but we want to do more things … that, 10, 15, 20 years ago, those types of formats, you wouldn’t have been surprised to see them on broadcast television. And we think we can do both. Both on sort of the traditional talk side and the more elevated, in the field production side.”
Playmaker recently launched a pairs bowling talk show with Mookie Betts, and has plans for unique travelogue concepts from Jameis Winston and Joy Taylor, respectively. It even hosted a star-studded up-front event for the first time this month.
Playmaker was purchased at a valuation of $54 million (later adjusted to $25 million) in 2023 by Better Collective, a gambling and media conglomerate that also owns Action Network. Layoffs followed. Under Katzman, who joined this month, Playmaker has a “mandate” to fill out its original content slate; Katzman also expects staffing to ramp up over the next six to 12 months.
Katzman believes Playmaker’s strength in a marketplace that has only gotten more competitive since that time is its willingness to move quickly and take risks, as well as its imagination pairing sponsorships with content.
For example, it embedded DraftKings wagers on guests’ bowling rounds and an AT&T-sponsored segment into Day Ones with Betts, playing off the friendship concept. Katzman hopes to fill out the Playmaker network to around one or two-dozen shows that each make money and generate a community independently.
Previously as head of talent at Initial Digital (formerly Silver Tribe Media), Katzman ran what he said amounted to an unofficial “outsourced talent office” for Playmaker, helping to launch several of the network’s hits. These personality-driven shows have performed well for the company, most notably Roommates Show with Brunson and Josh Hart, and Angel Reese’s Unapologetically Angel, which Playmaker confirmed ended this past spring.
Initial has significant influence in the sports podcasting and digital media space, but Katzman was drawn to the chance to focus his energy solely on one high-potential brand.
Playmaker has more recently become a landing spot for prominent talent looking for a new home. Beyond Taylor and Winston (who will also host a talk show with Playmaker), the company has also partnered with Shannon Sharpe and Gilbert Arenas as a monetization partner on the hosts’ popular shows. Katzman said the company wants to balance its portfolio between these partnerships and original shows, so long as all of its hosts are “collaborative.”
Simple, indistinct ad sales deals “probably don’t make that much sense for Playmaker,” Katzman explained, “because the magnet that I think we have, particularly on the sponsorship side when we’re responsible for that, is to be really creative.”
One unique project that could be a model for Playmaker’s future came this summer from Roommates, as Playmaker was one of several partners that brought to life a live, televised talk episode from inside Madison Square Garden celebrating the New York Knicks’ championship. Ticket sales for the 6,000 attendees at the event, which aired on ESPN2, went to charity, while the company generated revenue through sponsorships such as Chase, the presenting partner.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYyT6Ux-AS8&pp=ygUfcm9vbW1hdGVzIG1hZGlzb24gc3F1YXJlIGdhcmRlbg%3D%3D
Rather than licensing shows to paywalled streaming services, as some of podcasting’s heavy-hitters have done with Netflix and Prime Video recently, Katzman believes the Roommates live event is more of a blueprint for Playmaker.
“Generally speaking at Playmaker, we want to reach fans at scale,” he said.
“So in some ways, it always feels counterintuitive for us to think about a way to limit audience size. We want to not only launch shows that reach a large audience, but our No. 1 goal is reaching that audience every single day. So that type of approach doesn’t make sense to most of the things we’re working on.”
Though the celebrity-hosted talk space has felt somewhat creatively empty in recent years after a period of huge show premieres, Playmaker aims to be a leader in the next wave of sports talk concepts.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.