Podcasting’s Trust in Sports, Live Tours Continue Growing, & More

Why Podcasting Is a Must-Have For Rights Holders and Brands by Jim Salveson

A new thought leadership piece on Sounds Profitable from Sports Social Podcast Network Director of Sport Jim Salveson. Sports media has evolved significantly in recent years, with a noticeable shift from rights holders working with broadcasters to more direct fan relationships. Something podcasting delivers in spades, as they’re an intimate part of the audiences’ day. And a single podcast episode has the ability to itself be a content engine as it can generate everything from simple clips for social media to written features based on the episode. Podcasts and their associated ephemeral content are meeting sports fans directly where they are and forming strong relationships with them. Exactly what rights holders and brands wanting to tap into those fanbases want.

CMOs on their biggest priorities for 2026—excluding AI by Alyssa Meyers, Jasmine Sheena, Jennimai Nguyen, Katie Hicks, and Kristina Monllos

The Marketing Brew crew (I request one (1) t-shirt if they start calling themselves the Brew Crew) have interviewed a slew of CMOs and marketers about what they’re prioritizing for the new year. Since generative AI tools remain the new hotness, AI-related goals have been sequestered to a second article. Folks from Chipotle, Cava, and MGA Entertainment all share an interest in Brand Experiences for the new year. American Eagle, State Farm, and Duolingo have a focus on keeping their brands culturally-attuned and authentic. All of which are things podcasting happens to be quite good at delivering. Hint hint.

Podcasts face a major test in 2026: Can they make it big on TV screens? by Lucia Moses

Business Insider takes a look at podcasting’s biggest plays for TV in recent memory. In addition to YouTube’s growing video podcasting presence in recent months, other companies are looking to plant their flag in living room podcast consumption. Of course, as Download readers know, Netflix shopped around and lined up a slew of video podcasts that are going Netflix-exclusive this month. Before that, Fox’s acquisition of Red Seat Ventures and partnership with Tubi to air Crime Junkie signal another big player’s confidence in video-forward podcasting. That said, it’s not the death of audio. As The Podcast Landscape 2025 showed, a significant amount of YouTube podcast consumers still consume those video podcasts as audio. Adopter Media podcast ad buyer Adam McNeil says YouTube is important for podcast discoverability (as it’s a widely-used app that has famously good recommendation engines), but podcasting as a medium is still very much audio-based.

We’re in the Eras tour of podcasting by Whitney Friedlander

The Los Angeles Times covers the growing force that is podcast live shows. We’ve come a long way since 2019 when one colleague of mine overheard a Podcast Movement attendee, dumbfounded, say “have you heard people are paying to watch podcasters play D&D live?” Now podcasters are playing D&D in sold-out Madison Square Garden and Hollywood Bowl shows. Amy Pohler recorded a live podcast episode at the Fonda Theatre in Hollywood. And the power of podcast host parasocial relationships is driving new audiences to live events because that podcaster is there. UTA comedy touring and live events agent Joe Schwartz told the LA Times he’s seeing indicators that live podcast audiences include people who don’t normally attend live events. And the momentum can last a long time, as indicated by the perennial healthy ticket sales of legacy podcasts like My Favorite Murder, The Dollop, or Welcome to Night Vale. All of which have been doing live tours semi-regularly for the better part of a decade.

Meta’s Threads Makes a Play for Podcasters and Their Rabid Fans by Ashley Carman

A quick but important leftover from the holiday break: Meta’s microblogging platform Threads announced in late December the platform is rolling out podcast previews (snippets of shows that play directly in user feeds) as part of their larger push to court podcasters and fans onto the network. This follows the earlier 2025 rollout of Threads users being able to link a podcast on their profile so, when clicked, it opens into Apple Podcasts, iHeartPodcasts, or Spotify.

As for the rest of the news…