SmartLess podcast apparently worth $100 million to SiriusXM, which apparently has $100 million
The podcast hosted by Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, and Sean Hayes follows Joe Rogan's lead in becoming extremely valuable
Aux News SmartLess
In a move that may make you feel the sudden urge to look at a calendar to confirm that it is still 2024 and not somewhere around 2014 or so, someone just paid $100 million for a podcast. And not just someone, but SiriusXM, the satellite radio people who recently got in trouble with New York’s attorney general for allegedly making it “intentionally difficult for its customers to cancel their subscriptions.” Apparently they have $100 million laying around, and they used it to get “certain exclusive rights” to Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, and Sean Hayes’ SmartLess—a popular show, by all accounts, but one that is also now apparently worth a staggering amount of money.
Just to be clear here: We’re not saying SmartLess doesn’t deserve this money, but this is a medium that is very segmented and with very specific creators making shows for specific audiences, so there’s a good chance you could still be one of the biggest podcast fans in the history of podcasts without ever listening to one second of SmartLess. Not to mention that anyone in any place could make a podcast with a minimal amount of investment on their part, unlike movies or even music, so it just seems completely bizarre to be throwing this kind of money at any podcast.
This comes from Bloomberg (well, not the incredulity, that’s all A.V. Club), which says the $100 million is part of a three-year deal and will see SiriusXM getting the rights to “distribute and sell ads for SmartLess and other programs like Jameela Jamil’s Bad Dates” (not to sound like fake podcast fans, but is that a conscious Raiders Of The Lost Ark reference?), as well as coverage for “some live events and access to previously aired episodes.” SmartLess Media will apparently retain control of the show itself, so this is a distribution/marketing thing.
Bloomberg notes that SmartLess’ previous distribution deal with Amazon and Wondery+ was worth somewhere between $60 million and $80 million for three years, so the show—which just started in 2010—was already very valuable and will hopefully keep being valuable for at least the next three years. (It’s not entirely clear to anyone how podcasts make money, let alone $100 million, but hopefully someone at SiriusXM or SmartLess has more of a handle on it.)
Meanwhile, Joe Rogan’s deal at Spotify is supposedly worth $200 million, so as over-the-top as this all may seem for SmartLess, there are more bizarre deals happening in the podcast world than this one. At least Will Arnett, Sean Hayes, and Jason Bateman aren’t… you know, doing the shit Joe Rogan does. Or maybe they are? Like we said, it’s easy to be a big podcast fan who listens to podcasts all day and still be completely unaware of anything that has ever happened on SmartLess.
22 Comments
Don’t forget that SiriusXM bought Conan O’Brien’s company Team Coco back in 2022 as well.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/conan-obriens-podcast-company-sells-to-siriusxm-in-deal-valued-around-150-million-11653306900
Yeah, celebs are moving in and hoovering up a massive portion of ad dollars and exclusive deals. There’s still room for indies out there but few if any are going to get big payouts like this. Between talk show hosts jumping in the game and every TV actor doing a rewatch series there’s a lot less revenue to go around.
What is crazy is that they paid $100 million for Smartless but for $50 million more they got all of Team Coco, which includes Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, the associated YouTube channel, 10 other podcasts apparently, and a 5 year deal for Conan to develop new original content for Sirius. Paying $150 for that seems like a steal if you are paying $100 for Smartless.
You listed 2010 as when the show started. I think you meant 2020.
No one with a byline here gives a fuck about anything like that.
They still haven’t fixed it. Man this place rules.
“This comes from (well, not the incredulity, that’s all A.V. Club)”Ah, so that’s your value-add.
While I have it bookmarked on one of my services, I have to honestly say that most of my knowledge of what has been said on an episode of the Smartless podcast has originated from a post on AVclub. Who, which to be fair, often cites some other outlet’s post.Though sometimes after learning about a story from a post here, I will go listen to the entire episode and while I’m there, I might listen to one or two more.
Do you get paid more money for the word ‘apparently’ or have some bet of some sort?
It’s better than “ostensibly.” Nobody uses that word naturally!!
Fascinated by podcast economics. Pew surveyed podcast listeners and found Rogan was #1. But even he only had a 5% share of audience — this space is just crazy fragmented. So Smartless is realistically no more than 1/2 as big as Rogan, though likely even far smaller than that. I read one estimate of 100-500K listeners/week. Spotify is profitable, so there’s that. I guess ad sales are enough, plus the likely smaller revenue from subs?
It’s not entirely clear to anyone how podcasts make money I don’t really listen to podcasts, but I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that podcasts probably make money from advertising.
You are talking to the AV Club, a business currently using a 2002 strategy of slideshows to generate income.
I haven’t listened to podcasts in years and I can still hear Marc Maron’s voice talking about how much he loves MeUndies.
Depending on where the podcast is, youtube spotify, etc, they get money from ads and ad reads and streams. Listening to 2 Bears One Cave, if what they said is true, they make a ton from ad reads, more than views or AdSense.
Someone should give me some money for my podcast where I talk about all the different type of Gundams.
I think you should do your first episode about Gyunei Guss and Quess Paraya’s Jagd Doga. If your tongue manages to survive the ordeal, then you know you are prepared.
But did they keep the animation rights?
I love that the image here looks like Sean Hayes just sloppily cut out a picture of himself and pasted it next to Arnett/Bateman. Also: what the hell are these dudes talking about that’s worth $100M?Obligatory: Fuck Joe Rogan.
“like Jameela Jamil’s Bad Dates” (not to sound like fake podcast fans, but is that a conscious Raiders Of The Lost Ark reference?)“Now THAT’S a deep cut
coworkers going crazy at this news!
This is bonkers to me. This podcast is fine, I like it, but $100 million is a WILD amount of money. Do advertisers really see that kind of return on this? Or do advertisers just have money burning holes in their pockets now that they’ve dropped off of Twitter?