Apple and Spotify released their year-end top podcast lists over the past two weeks, and familiar favorites led once again.
Since its inception, the podcasting space has been dominated by a combination of Joe Rogan, the New York Times, conservative political talk and true crime, and 2024 was no exception. Yet while top sports voices flock to podcasting and corporate backers consolidate their investment in major players, New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce remains the only sports show playing in the big leagues.
Driven by Travis’ back-to-back Super Bowls, a relationship with Taylor Swift and Jason’s retirement and move to ESPN, New Heights‘ popularity remains massive.
These platforms don’t release precise listenership data. Still, podcast host and network lead at iHeartMedia Charlamagne tha God recently hinted that New Heights reels in as many as 10-12 million monthly listens on audio platforms. If that whisper through the grapevine isn’t enough evidence, the nine-figure deal Amazon’s Wondery rewarded the brothers with this year surely is.
All that hype also means nobody should be surprised that New Heights appeared on these charts. We already knew it was a hit. The more surprising lesson from what Apple and Spotify tell us is that there are no other sports hits right now.
Not a single other sports show appeared in Spotify’s top 50 shows of 2024, or Apple’s top 10 overall shows or top 10 new shows. Given the fame of major sports hosts and the influx of star athletes into the space, one would assume sports podcasts would break through more significantly.
Nope!
Remarkably, even the Spotify-owned Bill Simmons Podcast doesn’t do similar numbers to other Spotify shows like Anything Goes with Emma Chamberlain or What Now? with Trevor Noah. All that marketing heft and advertising in the Spotify app couldn’t compete with the organic popularity of other news, comedy and commentary shows. Simmons even had the advantage of being an audio hit two decades ago, long before video podcasting became popular.
That one outlier aside, the other clear takeaway from these charts is the split between audio consumption and YouTube viewership. For example, even if we count full episode views (rather than the total including clips), Nightcap from Shannon Sharpe and Chad Johnson broke 5.2 million YouTube views in November. Pardon My Take broke 2 million. Add those into the audio numbers, and perhaps you’ll get somewhere.
So why do media companies treat the biggest sports podcasts as great investments?
In the past four years, the following deals paint a picture of a pretty lucrative space:
- Spotify bought The Ringer for around $200 million in March 2020
- Dan Le Batard and Meadowlark Media score a $50 million licensing deal from DraftKings in January 2021
- Disney gives Pat McAfee around $17 million annually to license his podcast in May 2023
- Colin Cowherd tells the Sports Business Journal in June 2023 that investments in his podcasting company, The Volume, value it at more than $100 million.
- Stephen A. Smith spent $1.5 million on a new podcast studio in 2024 after a deal with iHeartMedia.
The easy lesson here is that in sports, networks lead the way. Even major voices like Le Batard, McAfee and Smith can’t compete with New Heights, let alone the $250 million Joe Rogan will reportedly get from Spotify on his extension or the $100 million that SiriusXM reportedly paid for its new partnership with SmartLess. The hosts who build networks, like Simmons and Cowherd (and the oft-ignored podcast mogul Dale Earnhardt Jr.), are faring better.
Despite all of this, the reality is that sports content is just not as big as other genres in the consolidating podcast industry. It may be a while before we see a deal as big as New Heights got unless networks continue to pull from podcasts to populate their cable networks, a la ESPN and McAfee. Even then, the lines blur when you try to figure out whether the McAfee Show constitutes a podcast anymore.
For all the talk of digital audio and video overtaking television, this is useful context. Perhaps it’s no surprise, looking at the data, that Smith’s new deal at ESPN reportedly allows him to go beyond sports and into the wider Disney empire. Sharpe interviews entertainers and celebrities on Club Shay Shay. Guys like Earnhardt and Cowherd (and even Jason Kelce) supplement their podcasting business with cushy TV jobs.
For the stars, podcasting can be a substitute for the type of wealth and influence that radio and TV once had. But in a world of selective listening and more choices than ever, sports voices don’t quite have the megaphone of their counterparts in news and entertainment — unless their last name is Kelce.
