His sports podcast network manages over 100 shows

03/05/21 • 40 min

1 Listener

The Business of Content with Simon Owens

If you review Kevin Jones’s resume on LinkedIn, it’s easy to see why he ended up founding a sports podcast network. He’s worked in virtually every sector of the sports media industry, from creating content for pro football teams to reporting for traditional radio stations to writing for sports news sites. He also launched Striking Gold, a 49ers-focused podcast that eventually accrued several thousand listeners.

But Kevin wasn’t content with simply being a podcast personality. Back in 2018, he began to notice that there were a lot of people like him -- podcasters with extremely passionate fan bases but no way to convert that fandom into actual revenue. So he began pitching them one by one on joining Blue Wire Podcasts, a network that would help them produce their shows and sell advertising in exchange for a cut of the revenue.

Flash forward two years, and Blue Wire has since taken on several million dollars in investment, is now producing narrative documentary podcasts, and recently signed a huge deal with one of Las Vegas’ biggest hotels.

I recently sat down with Kevin to discuss how he convinced podcasters to join his network, his approach to working with talent, and why he’s doubling down on longform narrative series.

I recently sat down with Kevin to discuss how he convinced podcasters to join his network, his approach to working with talent, and why he’s doubling down on longform narrative series.

Previous Episode

How newsletter writers are teaming up to bundle subscriptions

Over the past year, thousands of journalists have announced the launch of their paid newsletters, which are often hosted on platforms like Substack. Writers with already-existing large audiences have seen immense success with this strategy, pulling in six figures incomes within weeks of debuting their new newsletters.

But the vast majority of writers don’t have huge Twitter followings to promote their newsletters to. For them, growing a sustainable media business can take years of work, and many don’t have enough savings in the bank to hold out for that long.

That’s why we’re seeing a new trend in which writers team up to launch bundled subscriptions. This approach allows writers to cross pollinate their audience growth and ramp up content production to make a subscription much more worthwhile. Publications that include Defector, the Discourse Blog, Brickhouse, and Every have seen tremendous success with this model.

To understand how these writer cooperatives work, I spoke to Mark Stenberg. Stenberg runs his own Substack newsletter and has spent the last few months reporting on the creator economy for Business Insider. He recently moved over to Adweek to cover the media beat.

Next Episode

Lessons from my first year of running a paid newsletter

https://simonowens.substack.com/

I just passed my one-year anniversary of launching my paid newsletter, so I decided to dive into some of the biggest lessons I learned during that time.