Colin Cowherd has owned The Volume outright since 2021 and has resisted every conversation about selling it. That resistance now comes with conditions attached.
Cowherd founded The Volume in 2021 and has never taken a salary there, instead reinvesting revenue into the company’s management structure and using his income from Fox Sports and iHeartMedia to cover his own compensation. The network has grown to 60 employees and now carries shows across sports, music, entertainment, and culture, with partnerships through iHeartMedia — in place since launch — and Hard Rock Bet. He’s watched Bill Simmons sell The Ringer to Spotify for a reported $250 million in 2020, and Dave Portnoy sell a majority stake in Barstool for around $550 million in 2023 without moving to do the same.
“It would have to be the right fit,” Cowherd told OutKick’s Bobby Burack. “It wouldn’t necessarily have to be a broadcaster. I think I have knowledge in broadcasting, where I can handle that side. I don’t need guidance necessarily. It would have to be something that works for our employees. When it comes to The Volume, I don’t lose sleep at night if I have a bad show. I lose sleep at night because I have 60 employees at The Volume, and they have families, and so any decision I make, the partner will have to understand that. It will have to be a partner that respects my executive team, and it respects our broadcasting ability. So, I’m not in a hurry to do it. Also, it’s really fun having control.”
Given that he’s enjoyed the control so much, selling all of it isn’t what he has in mind. “If I was going to sell it, I don’t know if I would sell all of it,” Cowherd said. “A lot of people I’ve asked in finance have said, ‘Sell a small portion to a company that you like… take some off the table.'”
Cowherd pointed to Fox specifically as the model for a media deal done right, citing Lachlan Murdoch’s acquisition approach and referencing recent Fox deal activity — which he said had expanded the company’s scale “massively” in the prior three days — as evidence that the right partnership can compress years of organic growth.
“I would say Lachlan is very aggressive in his pursuit of acquiring things, or at least parts of things, so if I get the right synergy, they treat my employees right, we can scale,” he said. “So instead of taking 10 years to grow scale, if I can do it in 10 months with the right partner, I would do that.”
Cowherd has two years left on his Fox Sports deal and has already been in discussions with the network about cutting The Herd from three hours to two for his next contract. He recently moved to Chicago from Los Angeles and has talked about scaling back toward retirement, telling OutKick in the same interview that he envisions stepping away around 70. Still, the part he’s most resistant to giving up is the one thing he’s never paid himself for: the control. He passed on Pablo Torre because the price didn’t work. He sets the rules for who gets hired and on what terms. A partial sale to the right company — one that leaves his executive team intact and doesn’t make him answer to someone new — is the version of this that could actually see Cowherd willing to part with a slice of what he’s built.
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.