We made it, folks. This is the final daily issue of The Download for 2025. I’ll be back tomorrow morning with the weekly recap, and then it’ll be radio silence from Sounds Profitable newsletter and podcast feeds until Monday, January 5th. Whether today’s your first issue or you’ve been checking in every weekday since 2023: thank you for reading, here’s to a happy holiday season, and a happy new year. Before I start debating if I’m actually going to stay up until midnight on the 31st, let’s get into the news.
Netflix Strikes Video Podcast Deal With Barstool Sports by Caitlin Huston
The streamer has signed a multi-year deal with Barstool Sports, which includes bringing three of the company’s most popular sports video podcasts (including Pardon My Take) to Netflix (both new episodes and “select library episodes”). Mondo Metrics founder Nick Cicero argues this isn’t a “podcast move,” it’s a “daily sports attention” move. Netflix wants to build daily viewership, something video podcasts (especially sports-focused podcasts) are good at: creating habits. Also, investing in sports fandom is a great way to build out the sports side of a catalog without the expense of paying for the rights to broadcast games live. By investing in shows fans listen to about their favorite teams, companies like Netflix can own the conversation between games. Instead of generating watercooler moments, you can invest in the watercooler itself.
In Graphic Detail: Why YouTube is a genuine threat to Netflix by Krystal Scanlon
Now to look at a reason why someone like Netflix would wanna siphon sports fandom away from YouTube. Digiday takes a look back at recent data focusing around watch-time and how much people are engaging with YouTube in comparison to other streamers/television. Back in October Nielsen’s media distributor gauge showed YouTube comfortably in the top spot with 12.9% total watch-time. By comparison, Netflix was sixth with 8% of all watch-time.
2025 in audio: Audio’s ROI moment and the vodcast boom by Ellie Hammonds
The Media Leader has a 2025 in review for UK audio data, such as the Radiocentre research High Gain Audio, published during their Tune In In event. The report from WPP Media research was built from Thinkbox data covering 141 brands from 2021 to 2023. Data that over a full-term (two year) profit return on investment for digital audio is £5.20 for every £1 spent. By comparison, the deeply-entrenched broadcast radio sector in the UK has an ROI of just £5.
As for the rest of the news…
- The National Headliner Awards have published a call for entries into the 2026 contest with 89 categories (including podcasting). The awards are open to any publications distributed/broadcast from January 1st to December 31st of this year. The deadline to submit is January 30th, 2026.
- True Native Media has launched a new segment of their site dubbed True Native Intelligence, including several new case studies.
- Lemonada Media has announced Jessica Cordova Kramer is stepping down as CEO at the end of the year, with company co-founder and CCO Stephanie Wittels Wachs stepping into the CEO role nearly next year.
- Entertainment company Initial Group has acquired digital media management and production company Silver Tribe Media.
- The Media Leader has an article explaining the gender gap in podcast production that motivated the founding of women-owned video podcast company HERA Media.
