Athletes are increasingly becoming media personalities in their own right, as they seek opportunities off the field or court.
One of the fastest-growing areas in sports media is the athlete-led video podcast, with players recapping the week that was, interviewing teammates or other guests, and teeing up rivalries.
Just look at the success of the New Heights podcast, hosted by Philadelphia Eagles star Jason Kelce and his brother Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce, which has seen its YouTube viewership and podcast listenership skyrocket this season (perhaps for reasons other than football…).
Related Stories
It’s an opportunity too good for companies in the spots media space to ignore. So Bleacher Report, the digital sports brand owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, has made it a priority, launching video podcasts hosted by the likes of Buffalo Bills star Von Miller (The Voncast), Dallas Cowboys star Micah Parsons (The Edge with Micah Parsons), Los Angeles Dodgers all-star Mookie Betts (On Base with Mookie Betts) and University of Colorado star Travis Hunter.
“We thought strategically about investing in video and podcasts,” says Bennett Spector, the general manager of Bleacher Report. “We always look at consumption trends, and how sports fans and consumers are engaging with content, and Bleacher Report being really a sports platform for the next generation. A lot of how younger people and younger sports fans are consuming is around live and interactive video.”
“And we take a lot of cues from other platforms that are getting high engagement, so we look at the YouTube’s and Twitches of the world, and we see that live and interactive video is a majority of that consumption,” Spector adds.
The result is Bleacher Report’s video podcast bet, signing up major athletes with big personalities, and using that content to trickle down to the rest of the company’s platforms.
“More often than not, over the last decade, people have thought about internet video through the lens of VOD, which has been effectively kind of this expensive studio based video that was, you know, a large investment for very little shelf life of that content,” Spector says. “But what we found through live is that you can produce that content, quote unquote, very cheaply as live, and then downstream all of it.”
“You can also have that live turn into a VOD video that can go on certain platforms, and then that VOD video can be cut up into lots of little pieces for social channels,” he adds. “Ultimately, you can extract just the audio file for a podcast, and so in creating one piece of content through a vodcast it actually generates, you know, 20-30 pieces of content that you can put in front of millions of people.”
It’s a strategy that appears to be resonating with athletes as well.
“When I meet somebody randomly, and they say, ‘hey, I watched your podcast the other day or like, ‘hey, I saw you on the internet’… not like me playing football or anything like that, just guys that know me from my podcast, you know? So it’s super cool,” Miller says. “Like, it’s super cool to have range and to be able to reach audiences that I couldn’t really reach before.”
“I had a free way to just speak on what I wanted. To talk about what I thought was important,” Parsons adds. “There was nothing that I felt boxed in, it was kind of like Micah’s world… honesty, transparency and just full honest communication, and just letting me be me, not restricting who I am or what I can say, and I felt like we’ve done a good job so far.”
Bleacher Report signs up the athletes, and provides them with equipment and staff who help produce the podcasts. After it’s done, the company helps distribute them, posting them on its own platforms, as well as on YouTube, through podcast players and other social channels.
Probably young Von wouldn’t be able to do a podcast and be able to talk about each and every week,” Miller says. “But now I’m just so comfortable in who I am, so comfortable in my career, that it’s easy for me to talk, and I think the people that I have around me, they do so much research, and they present it to me in a way that I can really hold on to it, and the criticism is always positive and I can really learn and I can continue to evolve each and every show. I feel like I’m getting better and better and better.”
Bleacher Report’s strategy is also somewhat unusual in that it isn’t afraid of helping its talent develop their broadcast skills that could eventually be put to use elsewhere.
“A lot of media companies, I think, take a protectionist approach to their talent, and I think Bleacher is okay with people using it as not necessarily a stepping stone, but as a parallel path to a more traditional media responsibility for these guys,” Spector says. “Micah could be in a studio environment doing an NFL-post show wearing a suit, but what we’re offering is somewhat different and I think complementary to that, he can reach the more casual or younger generation through Bleacher Report, and where he can reach the more traditional consumer in a linear capacity, and I don’t think those things have to be mutually exclusive.”
“I think this is the first step for me,” Parsons says. “Eventually, I want to be on CBS, I want to do nighttime games, or I want to cover the show on maybe Fox or ESPN or something like that. Definitely get my foot in the door to represent the NFL represent in that media space.”
“Michael Strahan is my idol,” Miller adds, noting the Fox NFL studio host and ABC Good Morning America co-anchor. “So from day one of being in the National Football League, that was the angle for me, I always felt like okay, Michael Strahan doing his thing, and I was like, yeah, I want to be like that. So I always knew that this was something that I wanted to do.”
As for Bleacher Report, it is already looking toward its next generation of video podcast talent, with the fresh NBA and NHL seasons top of mind. Spector notes that the company has NHL, NBA, MLB and March Madness basketball rights, and that leaning into those relationships “creates a flywheel of content that you will see on linear or on Max. We try and stoke those fires.”
“So NHL is going to be an area of expansion for us,” he says. “We also have college rights as relates to March Madness. I think you can imagine that we’re going to expand in through that. We have U.S. Soccer rights. So U.S. Men’s National teams, again, plans to expand within that vertical. So we look at our rights and the NBA will probably be the cornerstone of those.”
