Versant reportedly in talks to acquire Vox Media Podcast Network

It turns out Vox Media’s change of heart on selling its podcast network didn’t last very long.

As we covered earlier this week, Vox Media spent much of last year shopping its podcast network to potential buyers — the most widely circulated of several proposals that also included New York Magazine and a full company sale, per Semafor’s Max Tani — before informing investors in February that the network was no longer available. According to the New York Times, Versant, the newly formed parent company of CNBC and MS NOW, is in talks to acquire it and is among multiple suitors in discussions. The Times noted that negotiations are still in their early stages and may not result in a deal.

The Vox Media Podcast Network produces around 40 shows, including Not Just Football with Cam Heyward, Sue Bird’s Bird’s Eye View, and A Touch More with Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe. As Awful Announcing’s Sean Keeley noted in his piece, Vox Media originated as SB Nation before expanding into a broader media company. While it has survived longer than most of its digital media peers, it has done so through seemingly endless rounds of layoffs, resource shifts, and site and brand closures, with its valuation dropping from $1 billion in 2015 to half that by 2023.

Per the Times, Versant CEO Mark Lazarus has said he wants roughly a third of the company’s revenue coming from non-pay-TV sources within three to five years, which is an aggressive target for a company whose most profitable businesses are still cable networks that are slowly losing subscribers. Acquiring a podcast network with 40 established shows — including sports podcasts with recognizable names like Cam Heyward and Sue Bird already attached — gets Versant closer to that target faster than anything it could build internally. NBCUniversal, Versant’s predecessor before the Comcast spinoff earlier this year, also invested $200 million in Vox Media back in 2015, when the assumption across the industry was that digital outlets like Vox and SB Nation represented the future of media. That bet did not pay out the way anyone hoped, and when Versant separated from Comcast, it inherited that original stake.

Whether this deal closes or not, the fact that the podcast network Vox told investors in February wasn’t for sale is now attracting multiple serious buyers two months later, says plenty about where both companies stand.