The Athletic raised $40 million in Series C funding last year. All of it was earmarked for the creation of original video and audio content. After launching its first original video series in October, The Athletic has now unveiled its new audio strategy.
Details first reported by Axios were confirmed today in a post at The Athletic. The website will launch 20 new podcasts. Some are original creations. Others, like The NBA Daily Ding, were acquired from other sites.
The Athletic’s slate of nationally focused podcasts will include:
- The Breakout: Julie Stewart-Binks’s NHL podcast with Billy Jaffe and Craig Custance, which will run throughout the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
- The NBA Daily Ding: A daily 20 minute podcast recapping the previous night in the NBA.
- The Opener: Jonah Keri’s baseball podcast.
- Rates and Barrels: An analytics-focused fantasy baseball podcast hosted by Eno Sarris and Derek Van Riper.
- Starkville: An MLB podcast hosted by Jayson Stark and Doug Glanville.
The other part of the company’s podcast strategy will be to super serve local audiences. The first markets to get their own podcasts from The Athletic are the San Francisco Bay area and Toronto.
All of The Athletic’s podcasts are ad-free and available exclusively to the site’s subscribers. They will not be available on popular podcasting platforms like iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play.
