Blending the intimacy of talk radio and the vibe of a dive bar chill, podcasts are ideal sports content. Fans flock to podcasts for news and chatter to keep up with the constant news cycle and drama of their favorite players, teams, and leagues.
Trail-blazing brands like Barstool Sports and The Ringer built lucrative businesses around the medium, leading everyone from the beat writer to the superfan to try their hand at podcasting. If you love sports, you have a favorite podcast.
Increasingly, those players are taking over the host chair . Current and former athletes took the industry to a new level starting around five years ago when stars like Pat McAfee and Draymond Green became their own spokespeople and brought fans into the locker room.
Now, they are cashing in. From the Kelce brothers to Dale Earnhardt Jr. to Shannon Sharpe, the most entertaining athletes who opt to dive into the content world give themselves a nice golden parachute to stay in fans’ lives and in the sports world. There is a new, more fun opportunity to settle into retirement that doesn’t include the grind of coaching or the crustiness of traditional media.
Around them, the modern stars of sports radio are still kicking. Meanwhile, a cottage industry has sprouted up in the offices of agencies and production houses. With a growing supply of prospective hosts and a strong demand from fans, connectors slipped in to launch shows and build brands.
While sports television faces an uncertain future , resources are shifting toward digital audio and video — and YouTube is increasingly the place for pods. The sportsbooks, fantasy companies, and other smart brands are putting on marketing blitzes across all the top shows. The smartest hosts are making their own merchandise and using podcasts to advertise their other businesses.
Plenty of the top names already made their mark, but the industry is still expanding. As we wait to see how the stars build their networks and expand their content empires; how the existing media apparatus evolves to include podcasts; and which voices stand out, a hierarchy is becoming clear.
It’s the perfect time for the inaugural Awful Announcing Sports Podcast Power List .
Take a look at the faces, movers, and minds behind the sports podcasting industry heading into 2025:
Shannon Sharpe – Shay Shay Media
In less than 18 months since leaving FS1, Sharpe hosted the interview of the year with Katt Williams on Club Shay Shay and built Nightcap into a powerhouse. Between the two, Sharpe reels in more than 100 million views a month. There may be no bigger sports media star online than Sharpe — and that’s not counting his consistent weekly presence on ESPN’s biggest daytime show, First Take .
On top of that, Sharpe continues to build Shay Shay Media’s roster through a partnership with The Volume. Shay Shay Media produces Jeff Teague’s popular Club 520 and The Bubba Dub Show , with new shows launching in the coming months. Sharpe is undeniable.
Big Cat & PFT Commenter – Barstool Sports
Pardon My Take is arguably the most impactful sports podcast going right now. Its tone helped define Barstool Sports and develop a new kind of audience, while its expansive style helped turn the podcast into a dominant form of sports content.
Featuring perhaps the best interviews in the business (a great indicator of whether a sports talent can cut it in 2024 is whether they are a good hang on PMT ) and innovative recurring segments that keep the audience coming back, PMT is a juggernaut. Big Cat and PFT often say their job is to be the type of guys that other guys want to hang out with. In doing so, they crafted a genre and built an empire.
Pat McAfee & Mike Foss – ESPN
So much of what a big podcast brand is now comes from The Pat McAfee Show . Setting aside his pioneering presence as an athlete in the space, McAfee also innovated greatly on the technical side while he hustled to build his show from the ground up. Using his X account like a running live blog of his show, running overlay ads for his “bottom line” style news scroll and sponsored segments, timed countdowns on B-roll, and even going live for hours at a time on YouTube — all stem from PMS .
The primary liaison between McAfee and ESPN, Foss rose quickly at ESPN to his current role as senior vice president of production. After founding For The Win and launching ESPN’s YouTube presence earlier in his career, Foss heads up digital production now at a time when that is increasingly becoming ESPN’s primary mode of distribution.
Dan Le Batard & John Skipper – Meadowlark Media
Le Batard surprised the sports media world in early 2021 following his departure from ESPN by pairing with former ESPN president Skipper for a new independent venture. Since then with The Dan Le Batard Show as its centerpiece, Meadowlark Media has struck numerous distribution deals and developed a smart network around the joie de vivre Le Batard and Co. bring.
Boosted by a DraftKings licensing deal, Le Batard and his crew remain central in the daily sports conversation. At the same time, Le Batard and Skipper continue to make an impact by way of Meadowlark’s “ microphones matter ” imperative through projects like a recent voter registration drive .
What began as a local radio show that was among the first to build a national audience through its RSS feed is now in its rightful place among the biggest podcasts in the business.
Colin Cowherd & Logan Swaim – The Volume
Antsy with extra time during shutdowns in 2020 and looking ahead to looming contract talks, Cowherd made like the rest of his counterparts in sports talk and launched a podcast network. The difference? Cowherd’s emphasis on YouTube — particularly live reactions — and a keen eye for sharp young talent allowed The Volume to hit immediately.
Together with Good Morning Football and DAZN vet Swaim, Cowherd has quickly turned The Volume into a distinct brand that goes beyond his signature show . Swaim told me he’s thrilled with the revenue growth at The Volume since it hired its first chief revenue officer this year and expects continued growth into 2025 , driven by partnerships with Sharpe and others like Draymond Green.
Bill Simmons – The Ringer
They call Simmons the Podfather for a reason. It’s no stretch to say the man invented the sports podcast, stretching out the familiar sports radio format and drenching it in light beer and crass jokes. Today’s Bill Simmons Podcast is more buttoned-up than the original but was massive enough to fund the entire Ringer network before it sold to Spotify for a third of a billion dollars in 2020.
Beyond his show, Simmons’ impact knows no bounds. His farm system is spread everywhere in sports media, and the very way sports is discussed in 2024 largely stems from him. Overt homerism, pop culture tie-ins, and gamified conversation all come from The Sports Guy. His looming free agency remains a major media story heading into 2025, signifying his continued import to the industry he revolutionized.
Travis & Jason Kelce – New Heights Podcast
Just ask Amazon how much these guys matter. A free-wheeling podcast from two hugely popular NFL players who happen to be brothers was already a winning formula before 2023 when Travis shot his shot with Taylor Swift and shot New Heights into the stratosphere. Now, it’s one of the biggest shows in any genre and reportedly pulled in nine figures from Amazon .
If a recent hint from Charlamagne tha God that New Heights pulls 10-12 million listeners per month via audio platforms alone is any indication, audiences can’t get enough of the Kelces. Their media footprints should only expand as Jason enjoys retirement and Travis likely joins him soon.
Mack Sovereign & Tunde ‘TD’ St. Matthew-Daniel – Wave Sports + Entertainment
Wave picked up where trailblazers like JJ Redick, Pat McAfee, and the Knuckleheads left off and took the athlete podcast from a curio to a business. From the Kelces to Carmelo Anthony to Paul George , Wave crafts distinct shows around big talents to great success.
Wave’s other businesses also give it a leg up to keep scaling its digital content production business . With St. Matthew-Daniel and his experience at The Ringer and Uninterrupted in tow, $27 million in fundraising from 2022, and a major partnership with Prizepicks, Wave appears to have real staying power.
Jeremy Levine & Liz Marro – Underdog Fantasy
What other company can boast Cam’Ron and Bill Belichick in one family? By sponsoring existing hits and producing original content, Levine and Marro have made Underdog impossible to ignore in the sports content space .
The daily fantasy company has embraced content as key to its business model from the start. A creative touch has helped nurture breakout hits like It Is What It Is and Gil’s Arena as well as Coach with Bill Belichick and Sheed & Tyler featuring Rasheed Wallace. The cliche of “meeting sports fans where they are” is worn out for a reason, but led by founder Levine and CMO Marro, Underdog does it for sports fans of all ages and tastes.
Matt Schwimmer – Playmaker HQ
Following an acquisition by Better Collective last year, it’s hard to believe Playmaker is just getting started. Few networks hold a candle to Playmaker when it comes to the entertainment factor of its roster of hosts, which includes Shaquille O’Neal, Marshawn Lynch, Udonis Haslem, and Angel Reese. A recent live show in Central Park for The Roommates Show from New York Knicks stars Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart signified just how big Playmaker suddenly is.
Schwimmer comes from the Better Collective side with significant oversight in all arms of the company that should only add ammunition to Playmaker’s growth.
Marissa Rives – SiriusXM
Recent deals with Alex Cooper and Dale Earnhardt Jr. signify that SiriusXM’s growing investment in podcasts will extend into sports, too. Rives is a SiriusXM vet rising from producer of the satellite radio company’s sports shows to director of its sports podcast division.
If other major spends on the likes of SmartLess and 99% Invisible are any indication, SiriusXM is … serious … about podcasts and is coming for the sports world next.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. & Mike Davis – Dirty Mo Media
If you love NASCAR and have ever listened to a podcast, odds are it came from the Dirty Mo Media network. With six active podcasts , nearly a half-million subscribers on YouTube, and a new deal with SiriusXM , Dirty Mo is driving a huge audience in a relatively niche sport.
Earnhardt continues to add job titles post-retirement and brought his brand director from JR Motorsports and former podcast cohost to run Dirty Mo as it continues its ascent. As much as Earnhardt is NASCAR, Dirty Mo is NASCAR podcasting.
Richelle Markazene – Omaha Productions
Omaha does more than the ManningCast. As part of a broad partnership with ESPN, Peyton Manning’s cleverly named company produces growing, innovative shows from Mina Kimes , Scott Van Pelt, and Kevin Clark .
As head of audio, Markzene brings extensive experience from ESPN and the NFL Network to the digital audio and video space at Omaha, which was valued at more than $400 million in 2023.
Matt Barnes & Stephen Jackson – All the Smoke
As seen by nabbing a surprise interview with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, this OG athlete-hosted NBA podcast keeps getting stronger. Barnes and Jackson balance each other perfectly as hosts and maintain an authenticity some athlete-hosted shows only fake.
By scoring big interviews, expanding into other sports, and landing a big licensing partnership with Meadowlark Media and DraftKings, All the Smoke is still on its way up.
Roger Bennett – Men In Blazers
Men In Blazers calls itself the biggest soccer-focused media company in North America, and the results speak for themselves. Always the main voice of the company, Bennett survived the departure of founding cohost Michael Davies to strike a deal with Wondery and grow a network featuring star talents like Fabrizio Romano and Sam Mewis.
Jimmy O’Brien & Jake Storiale – Jomboy Media
If you know anything about talkin’ , you know Jomboy. A case study in brand-building, Jomboy saw O’Brien and Storiale go from Yankees diehards to media moguls in less than a decade. The company’s expansion into other sports has been slow off the ground, but it remains a baseball powerhouse featuring weekly interviews with Yankees manager Aaron Boone , retired Twins star Trevor Plouffe, and broadcasting veteran Chris Rose.
Chris Solomon, Todd Schuster, Neil Schuster, Phil “Big Randy” Landes, D.J. Piehowski – No Laying Up
These longtime mainstays around the top of the sports podcast charts managed to do the near-impossible and make a fun, fresh brand around golf. Their popular video miniseries generate a lot of attention, but the podcast is all about the chemistry and passion of its hosts and founders.
Hopefully, recent work with Omaha and ESPN and the hire of veteran journalist Kevin Van Valkenburg are a sign of even more good content to come.
Craig Custance & Jesse Burton – The Athletic
In the NFL and global soccer, The Athletic dominates. The Athletic Football Show is a mainstay near the top of the charts despite losing analyst Nate Tice to Yahoo this year, while the recently launched Scoop City is a hidden gem. But on a global scale, The Athletic’s international soccer shows and club-centric Premier League shows do major numbers and represent a sizable portion of The Athletic’s business.
Sarah Spain – Good Game & iHeartMedia
After years of trying to use her experience at ESPN to get the network consistent with women’s sports coverage, Spain has partnered with iHeartMedia and Deep Blue Sports & Entertainment to be the anchor of a growing network of women’s sports podcasts. As part of that collaboration, Spain is also the literal voice of women’s sports on iHeart’s wide array of syndicated shows and stations around the country, where she provides updates on games and news.
Spain is the face of a group that includes Sheryl Swoopes and Rennae Stubbs with Good Game , a creative and innovative all women’s sports show that was put on the map in a big way in October when Spain interviewed pioneering USA Today columnist Christine Brennan amid a public war of words with the WNBA players’ union. If the first few months of Good Game are any indication, it will be a newsmaker and a well-produced go-to for women’s sports fans.
Brett Rader – Yahoo
Led by a new partnership with Ariel Helwani, Yahoo seems to make major hires on a near-monthly basis. Recent additions like Tice and NBA analyst Kevin O’Connor add to a network that is moving like it wants to be an even more major player in the space.
As podcast head, Rader executes the vision of new president Ryan Spoon and head of content Sam Farber, who has executed an impressive combination of content partnerships and in-house production swings in their year-plus refreshing the longstanding Yahoo Sports brand.
Michael Klein – Silver Tribe Media
Since leaving CAA in 2021, Klein built a business that touches nearly every aspect of the digital sports content space. Klein represents major hosts in the industry while working alongside production and distribution companies as a kind of connective tissue as the space continues to grow.
Corey Vann – CAA
As NBA athlete-hosted podcasts exploded in recent years, CAA needed a point person. Vann stepped into the role and helped put together an early deal between Wave Sports + Entertainment and CAA-repped Paul George. After George’s success with Podcast P , Vann started to generate more conversations in the marketplace for other star athletes to launch shows of their own.
Soon, shows like Roommates with Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart and 7PM In Brooklyn with Carmelo Anthony followed. With a roster that features basketball superstars like Tyrese Haliburton, Donovan Mitchell and Cameron Brink, Vann is sure to have his hands full.
Jerry Silbowitz – UTA
As the co-head of UTA’s sports media division, Silbowitz has helped oversee the evolution of his clients’ roles from radio and television to digital media. With clients like Rich Eisen and Helwani, Silbowitz is at the center of several independent multiplatform talk show projects that highlight that evolution. UTA bridges the traditional media and online content creator spaces in a way that allows it to create modern roles for its clients across media, and Silbowitz is the point person on the sports side of that effort.
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