It has felt a long while since I wrote about a million dollar podcast contract being gained rather than lost. The announcement that SmartLess, the US podcast and media company, will move from Amazon to SiriusXM for a reported $100 million multiyear deal, where the three SmartLess stars, Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett, also keep ownership of their show, is worth more than a mention.
First, background into SmartLess if you haven’t heard or heard of it. Bateman, Hayes and Arnett are all comedic (and on occasion serious) actors of note who appear to have come together to use some lockdown spare time. The first episode, from July 2020, also featured Dax Shepard and the concept that one of the three hosts would bring a special mystery guest who the other two wouldn’t be able to prep questions to or for. This formula hasn’t changed.
A year after the first SmartLess episode the podcast was acquired by Amazon and through them Wondery in a deal worth around $80 million. In Australia it is represented by LiSTNR and SCA who get new episodes a week after Wondery releases them.
In the most recent Australian Podcast Ranker, SmartLess ranked 14th with 234K monthly listeners and half a million monthly downloads. There are only three overseas podcasts in the top 20 (only Stuff You Should Know, at 8th, is above them) and in 2023, Australian podcast consumption ticked over a billion downloads for the first time, up 26% on the year previously.
SiriusXM have said that the purchase of SmartLess is to give them exclusive advertising and distribution rights, exclusive subscriber content, events and also the other podcasts now included in the SmartLess media pride, as they call it, including Bad Dates hosted by Jameela Jamil.
I’m unsure whether this will change anything for LiSTNR rights or on the podcast ranker, who include the SiriusXM podcast network. Not included on our ranker are Spotify exclusive podcasts as the music and podcast platform refuses to pay for inclusion.
I mention Spotify for two reasons. After coming out with all guns blazing into the podcast world by acquiring Meghan Markle’s Archetypes, Brené Brown’s Unlocking Us and Dare to Lead, Barack and Michelle Obama’s two podcasts and The Joe Rogan Experience, only Joe Rogan now remains. And his contract, also reportedly worth around $100 million, is up sometime this year.
It also means that local Spotify podcast exclusives like Toni and Ryan don’t get a seat at the ranker table. And with the ABC launching on the ranker late last year, showing that Conversations is getting more than three million downloads a month, I feel the investment is worth it.
I thought that SiriusXM would make a play for Rogan, but think they’ve played their cards by investing in SmartLess. Maybe Amazon will? With Apple working to tidy up their own podcast offerings and even how they are downloaded, 2024 already feels like a year of consolidation.
Like radio, there will be a small pocket of podcasts earning the big bucks, where as most podcast makers and producers will need more than one stream of income to survive. But also like radio, all it takes is one SmartLess, or Kyle and Jackie O, to make a newcomer with a great idea, free time and a huge amount of gumption, to think that their audio product could be the next big thing.
