Spotify and Netflix are bringing sports podcasts to the living room, promising bigger reach, higher production value, and some new trade-offs
In 2020, Spotify started rolling out support for video podcasts. It was a strange decision for a company that had dominated the audio space with streaming music and podcasts. The move, it turned out, was a way to compete with YouTube, with Spotify’s advantage being that many podcast listeners were already engaging with their app and video provided an opportunity for more ad revenue.
In 2024, Spotify began to push more podcasts to upload video, and it has worked—with over [430,000 shows uploading video](https://creators.spotify.com/features/video#:~:text=Ove r 430%2C000 shows upload video on Spotify.,listeners said they prefer shows with video 1.) to the platform. One such podcast that has embraced video since then has been the wildly popular The Bill Simmons Podcast in addition to the rest of The Ringer’s podcast offerings. That decision is making more sense this week as Spotify announced that 16 shows from The Ringer would be distributing their video podcasts to Netflix.
It’s a move that brings the mobile-first world of podcasting to the living room, where Netflix is a market leader. Podcasts in their original audio-only form often felt like a replacement to talk radio. And that format held strong for many years, but it seems that the shift of sports shows to Netflix is a reimagination of sports talk shows from decades ago, tailored for an on-demand audience that consumes content on multiple form factors.
For the longest time, I resisted video podcasts on Spotify. I didn’t understand their point, much like I didn’t understand the point of watching YouTube videos on a TV. But then, I watched a video episode of the Higher Learning podcast (also a Ringer production, although interestingly not coming to Netflix) on my TV through the Spotify Xbox app. And in that moment it clicked and all made sense. These video podcasts are no different from watching First Take or The View.
Think back to the 1990s for a moment. It was the golden age of the talk show. Personalities like Oprah Winfrey, Jerry Springer, Ricki Lake, and Sally Jessy Raphael were charismatic personalities that got viewers to tune in with unique brands of authenticity and provocative personas. They were relevant to life in that decade but also featured hosts that people wanted to watch and listen to.
In the 2000s, sports talk shows defined the way we consumed sports analysis—an evolution from newspaper columns. Shows like Pardon the Interruption, Around the Horn, Jim Rome is Burning, and The Best Damn Sports Show Period mixed analysis, controversial opinions, and highlight reels. They featured monologues, debate sessions, and interviews. Those elements are trademarks of the top sports podcasts in today’s landscape. If it worked in a different era, who’s to say that it wouldn’t work in today’s landscape? After all, the sensibilities of what many people find entertaining has changed little.
In past decades, segments that performed well on these shows often included attention-grabbing topics that sparked discussion to foster engagement. Sound familiar? That is the formula used by many successful influencers who make content on Instagram and TikTok. There is something about a statement that we disagree with that we can’t get enough of, a way to validate why we disagree so strongly.
If the content habits of the masses have largely remained the same, that should translate to watching that programming in the living room the way that it used to be consumed. Spotify has recognized that relying solely on their app isn’t the solution. On a smart TV, users have a number of apps installed. Many smart TV manufacturers like Samsung and LG typically ship with the Netflix app pre-installed. While Spotify is available for download on these platforms, it is not a must-have app on a device that will likely have limited storage for a multitude of apps.
By being on Netflix, Spotify taps into a market that may use a different podcasting app (like Pocket Casts or Apple Podcasts) for their original programming. It’s easy to envision a scenario where a user may watch a documentary from Netflix’s Untold series about a college football player, only to be suggested a podcast episode from The Todd McShay Show about the same sport. Many people listen to podcasts while doing chores or even as background noise, much as TV talk shows were consumed in the past. This is a reimagination of that dynamic.
What this partnership creates, however, is a new medium and a push to reinvent sports podcasting in a very meaningful way. What used to be people just talking may be evolving into a much more nuanced and produced product—which opens an abundance of opportunities and challenges.
Pushing video podcasts into the living room has a couple of ripple effects. The first is that the days of plugging in a mic and talking into your computer may be fading—at least for big name podcasting. The second is that Netflix is looking to take aim at YouTube, who has long been the king of long-form video.
Pivoting to more video podcasts with enhanced distribution on TV streamers presents a unique dilemma for sports podcasts in particular. Most of The Ringer’s sports shows feature speaker video feeds with small news style banners indicating the current topic. That works well when utilizing the Spotify app on a phone or tablet. But there is room for so much more when the screen canvas becomes larger.
Sports content on social media these days is filled with highlights and graphics that highlight statistics. Incorporating those elements may need to become table stakes in a world where podcasts are distributed to apps like Netflix. This is especially true of many episodes of Bill Simmons’ show, where he often interviews guests via Zoom.
To be on TV, there may be an expectation eventually to have a fleshed out set where the quality of the recording increases and plays well on larger format viewing devices. To his credit, Simmons has begun this pivot, debuting a new recording space before the start of the NFL season this year. His teams all have excellent cameras and the production quality is reminiscent of what we have seen on TV shows in the past.
If this venture is successful, it is likely that many sports podcasts will feel the need to up the production value, and in essence reverse engineer TV shows from the past. A rundown on the side of the screen, set design, breakout segments—these all feel like potential pivots for the future of sports podcasting. But does this pivot create a divide that loses the essence of what made sports podcasts so popular in the first place?
The term podcast combines Apple’s iPod, the popular media player, and “broadcast”. It was coined back in 2004, and has grown as a way for creators to reach audiences ever since then. What has made them so easy for years is the ease of access. Anyone with a voice recorder and a smartphone could create one, and anyone with a podcasting app on their smartphone could listen to one.