Sports Is One Of The Highest-ROI Use Case For The Video Podcast Era
By Adam Grossman
When Amazon used its May 11 Upfront in New York to argue that creator-led video podcasts are no longer fringe inventory but the next generation of TV networks, it validated a thesis that should land hardest with sports owners, leagues, and rights holders.
The format Amazon is selling to advertisers (long-form, episodic, video-first, host-led, community-anchored) is the same format that sports fans have been gravitating to organically for a decade. I originally wrote about the demand for long-form sports content in article for JohnWallStreet in 2023.
So what’s changed? The evolution of podcasts to be included as long-form video content.
The Update: Amazon Is Pricing Video Podcasts Against TV Budgets
At the Upfront, Amazon positioned its Wondery slate, including a newly announced Oprah Winfrey deal and an upcoming Jason Kelce show that, per Amazon, will trade studio interviews for Jackass-style stunts, as 360-degree franchises that plug into Prime Video, Amazon Music, the Amazon ad network, and the company’s retail flywheel. Angie More, Amazon’s director of creator advertising partnerships, told Digiday the company is no longer interested in podcasters who want to sell one show. It wants creators who can behave like networks.
The pitch isn’t speculative. A 2025 Triton Digital report found that roughly 80% of podcast listeners now consume both audio and video, and the 2025 Acast Podcast Pulse study found 79% of listeners choose podcasts because the format feels like a one-to-one connection. Measurement remains the soft spot (Amazon admits it), but the strategic direction is clear: brand budgets that historically chased upfront TV inventory are migrating into creator-led, long-form video.
Why Sports Is The Best-Built Category For This Format
Three structural advantages make sports one of the highest-ROI use case for the video podcast era.
First, talent supply. The sports world produces an unusually deep bench of people audiences will actually sit with for ninety minutes: current and former athletes (Travis and Jason Kelce’s New Heights), journalists with reporting access (Pablo Torre’s Pablo Torre Finds Out), and analyst-host networks (The Ringer’s slate of NBA, NFL, and college football shows). These hosts already command the parasocial trust Acast’s study describes, built over years of game broadcasts, locker-room footage, and shared fan rituals.
Second, evergreen story supply. Unlike most creator verticals, sports generates a fresh, dated, high-emotion narrative arc every week from August through June. That removes the single biggest cost driver for a creator network: programming the next episode.
Third, embedded community. Fans of a team, athlete, or sport are pre-sorted into the exact segments advertisers struggle to assemble through identity graphs and clean rooms. Amazon is trying to build that audience graph from scratch. Sports properties already own it.
Where The Value Gets Created
The commercial opportunity for sports entities runs in two directions.
Outbound, properties should treat sports-adjacent creators as a paid distribution and affiliate channel, not a press list. A team’s media office should be looking for affiliate marketing opportunities through long-form podcast verticals, and athlete-hosted shows with the same rigor it brings to broadcast partners. The deliverables are concrete: ticket-sale attribution codes against creator audiences, branded merchandise drops timed to episode releases, food-and-beverage trial offers tied to in-show calls to action, and game-streaming subscription funnels for properties that own their own DTC pipes. Affiliate economics, not earned media value, should be a standard unit of measurement.
Inbound, properties that build owned long-form video podcasts (and there is no reason a team, league, or athlete management company can’t operate a Wondery-style studio) unlock a new partnership category. Corporate partners increasingly want host-read integrations, episode title partnerships, in real life (IRL) event partnerships, and series-level category exclusivity.
These deals carry higher margins than standard partnerships in large part because the inventory is scarce, the audience is opt-in, and the brand association is durable across replays. Properties that move first will lock up the best creators and the cleanest sponsor slates.
Bottom Line
Amazon’s bet is that long-form, host-led video podcasts will absorb a meaningful share of the companies’ marketing, advertising, and promotions budgets. Sports has the talent, the narrative cadence, and the pre-sorted audiences to be the category where that bet can pay off first. The properties that treat creator partnerships as a real revenue line, driving ticket sales, streaming subs, merchandise, food and beverage, and event attendance, and that build their own owned long-form studios to sell to sponsors, will be the ones extracting the upside.