Meet The Podcasters is a special 9-week series created in partnership with Point to Point Marketing. Our seventh feature is on the CEO of Jomboy Media, Courtney Hirsch. Follow along with the series, and revisit former conversations by checking out the entire category.
Courtney Hirsch joined Jomboy Media in December of 2020 and was elevated to COO in less than three years. During her time with Jomboy Media, she has led the company’s creator-led concept spearheading original IP strategy while growing audience share and partnership revenue. Bringing her sales background from several digital media and technology companies, most notably Uber, Jomboy Media secured their first year of over $10 million dollars in revenue in 2024. Her ability to lead and grow the company resulted in a promotion to CEO in March 2025.
In this edition of ‘Meet The Podcasters’, we explore Hirsch’s role with Jomboy Media, how they continue to strengthen their brand through Major League Baseball, and the partnerships with traditional media outlets and other creators in the space that help expand brand awareness.
Courtney Hirsh spoke with Barrett Media from the Jomboy Media headquarters in the Bronx.
*Editor’s Note: Answers have been edited for clarity and length.*
John Mamola: You were just named CEO of Jomboy Media in March. Let’s talk about the new role and your transition going from the COO to the CEO on Jomboy Media. What, if any, new duties do you have with the company?
Courtney Hirsch: I don’t have that many new duties. Honestly, I’ve been doing the CEO role for two years. It was left vacant, so it was unfilled.
When I took over operations two years ago I was the head of sales, and Jimmy (O’Brien) really wanted to step back to focus on content. I wanted to step up and take over all of the business aspects. We decided to title me COO. Then we realized that I was doing the job of a CEO anyway, so we were excited to match the title to the duties.
Personally, I’m just excited to be a more forward face of the brand, speaking on its behalf. Helping make connections in the industry and continuing to be disruptive but finding new ways to create partnerships. That’s what I’m really excited to do in the future.
John Mamola: We just had the launch of baseball season earlier this month. I would imagine that’s a holiday for the Jomboy Media brand as a very baseball-centric media company. The offseason obviously gives you kind of a good ramp to plan and prepare for Opening Day. If you could talk about that planning phase for the start of the season, and the excitement of Opening Day when it arrives.
Courtney Hirsch: The off season is just as busy, maybe even busier, than the actual in season. We’re building up our original IP and content. I don’t know if you’ve heard about Warehouse Games at all. A lot of those big productions now happen in the off season.
Then we’re making all the programming changes, tweaks, strategy changes to how we’re attacking social media. We’re doing all of that right before the season starts in January and February. Opening Day is a big moment for us.
I think it used to feel like we’re so busy in season, and now it’s almost like we are so busy in the off season with the other stuff. Then gearing up for how we’re going to change once we get the season started, we’re locked in, and focused. We know the routine, and how to attack everything.
It’s really exciting once we get to Opening Day. We have a huge party inside the office. It’s my favorite day of the year hands down.
John Mamola: I read that Jomboy Media eclipsed over $10 million in revenue last year.
Courtney Hirsch: We crossed that threshold last year, and we’re continuing to grow revenue about 30 to 40% year over year. My proudest thing running the business side is that I think when you first take over a startup, there’s this narrative that a startup has two paths. They can either be profitable, or they could put their foot on the gas with revenue and just really focus on top line revenue.
We were able to grow top line revenue by 40% while increasing profitability, which is just a testament that you can do both. You can have a really fast-growing business, but also make it a healthy, sustainable business that you want around for the long term.
John Mamola: What do you feel makes Jomboy Media stand out to the advertising dollar in a very crowded digital media space? What makes Jomboy Media a little more unique? Is it the tie to Major League Baseball, or the creator-led type of media?
Courtney Hirsch: I think it’s the community, and how strong our community roots for and supports us. It’s remarkable for the brand’s advertisers.
When we bring an advertiser on board, and the first time their integration goes live. The comments on our page are flooded with ‘holy s**t, you closed T Mobile. Congrats!’ Or, ‘Mountain Dew has entered the chat.’ They’re cheering that we signed a big advertiser, and that just still always gives me goosebumps because what audience is pumped that they got an ad? Usually they’re annoyed and they walk away from the TV. Now, they’re embracing the advertisers.
I think it’s that aspect of the die hard community. It’s the special touch that our creators put on the brand integrations. It really feels like you can feel how they care about our partners, and it’s not just ‘oh, let me get through this ad read.’
John Mamola: One of the more unique things about Jomboy Media is its heavy baseball centric. It’s not just heavy baseball centric, but heavy New York Yankees centric too.
Obviously, they’re the pinnacle franchise of the sport. That’s what Jomboy Media is attached to, or at least framing a good amount of content surrounding that team. There’s a lot of podcast companies that branch out to everything with an all-in type of model, where Jomboy Media is micro-focused on baseball. Talk about why that works so well for you, versus going to an all-in approach.
Courtney Hirsch: Our original strategy is we thought we were going to be a local podcast network. We have Talkin’ Yanks, and thought about Talkin’ Giants, Talkin’ Phillies, Talkin’ Dodgers. Then we quickly realized that we’d rather build national brands and national IP, and the ceiling was bigger if we focused on national coverage.
Instead of expanding that local strategy, you’ve seen us take Talkin’ Yanks, and build Talkin’ Baseball which is a national baseball show. Build the Breakdown, a flagship YouTube show that goes across all social media. That’s the strategy that we’re really leaning into now. It’s a creator led strategy.
A lot of people ask me, ‘what’s your soccer strategy? What are you going to do in basketball?’ That’s not how we think at all.
I’m thinking what creators are we going to bring on? What creators fit our tone of voice and the Jomboy Media brand? Once we bring on those creators, what do those creators want to talk about? Let me build an infrastructure and an environment that they can talk about their passions, and they can build their community through content.
If we had a creator that wanted to talk about golf, and they fit the Jomboy Media brand where they were also going to participate in the Warehouse Games and some other original content, that’s what we would do. We’d totally bring that creator on board. Then we would grow in that way.
It’s a hard concept for people to get sometimes, because it’s so dependent on the creator. I think that’s what makes it so authentic. We’re not building a strategy and then forcing in talent. We’re letting the talent lead the strategy.
John Mamola: What fits the Jomboy Media model?
Courtney Hirsch: It’s people that have fun while watching sports. We try to strike this tone of deep in substance, light in tone. We know what we’re talking about. We’re going to ask Yankees Manager Aaron Boone the tough questions on Talkin’ Yanks, but we’re always going to be playful about it and never cross that line.
One of our mottos is at the expense of no one except maybe ourselves. We’re playful. We’re going to rag on ourselves, and each other. We’re never going to be controversial just for the sake of being controversial or make someone feel left out or ostracized.
Jimmy (O’Brien) has been saying internally a filter for content for himself and the creators is, would you send this video to your mom, dad, grandpa or grandma? Would you feel comfortable? That’s what he thinks about when he’s creating his breakdowns. You’ll hear him drop the F bomb or something, but it’s usually in for emphasis and not at someone.
We want our content to continue to connect generations like that, and creators that are like on board with that.
John Mamola: The one aspect of the Warehouse Games is that you do welcome outside content creators, where you’re almost expanding your network through cross pollination of all the other brands too. If you’re looking for the most important thing to come from the Warehouse Games from a branding standpoint, is it getting other people involved, where Jomboy Media helps grow others, while they help you expand your audience?
Courtney Hirsch: We help promote their shows. They get more exposure being on Warehouse Games, and everyone brings their community and audience in. It’s nice to work on original content and IP that we have full control over. The other content that we’re doing is highly impacted by the results of a specific team or a league. We don’t control those results.
Sometimes we live and die by if someone won the World Series. That really changes our business for that specific time period. It’s nice to have something that we have more control over and that has a bigger ceiling.
John Mamola: I was going to ask you that, because there’s a big emphasis on the New York Yankees. Jomboy Media has done deals with the Yes Network. You have the Yankees manager Aaron Boone on weekly with the brand.
Courtney Hirsch: Yes, he is back for his third season this year.
John Mamola: The success of the Yankees, I would imagine, has a lot to do with the success of the Jomboy Media brand. Do you do you see that as one in the same or can it be different?
Courtney Hirsch: I think the Yankees are unique because it’s such a strong franchise. There’s only a couple franchises in baseball that would be super successful no matter the performance of the team. It helps when the team is doing great, and this last World Series definitely helped that we had both the Mets and Yankees in a playoff run.
We had the big key markets with the Dodgers too, and took advantage of that with 24/7 live coverage of all the games. Social was ranking, because it was like this is our moment and what we worked so hard for these opportunities. You have to be ready to unpack those opportunities when they come.
John Mamola: We talked a little bit about the off season, and using the off season to plan for the next season. There is a lot of discussion currently that baseball could be locked out following next season. The issues surrounding a potential salary cap. Plus baseball continues to have issues with television contracts and the RSN mess. ESPN is even opting out of their national rights deal following this season.
Looking ahead is there any concern that if there is a lockout, that that could really affect the bottom line for Jomboy Media?
Courtney Hirsch: No, that is not something that I’m worried about. We’ve survived the pandemic when things were changing. We have a strong community of young sports fans, and have so many different things to talk to them about.
Our creators have so many passions, and we have so much original content. I feel we will be fine if that were to happen.
John Mamola: About a year ago, you signed a deal with iHeartMedia and The Dan Patrick Show podcast network. Jimmy’s 3 Things plus Wake n Jake have been on their network for about a year now.
There’s not a lot of podcast networks that work a distributor type of partnership with a traditional radio brand such as iHeartMedia. What’s been the biggest thing from that partnership, and maybe some things that you can take from it that you can improve your business model now as a CEO?
Courtney Hirsch: We learned a lot of things on cross promotion and how you integrate one podcast into a network. I think they taught us about just little things that we can do to help the cross pollination of our different shows.
It was a great partnership. I think that we have very similar voices in sports, but probably different audiences. I think we both benefited greatly from that partnership.
John Mamola: Is there any thought for Jomboy Media to expand outside of New York City to another home market? Maybe in Los Angeles for the Dodgers, or maybe Chicago for the Cubs?
Courtney Hirsch: No, we’re really focused on building national shows, and we could do that from our home studio in New York and our warehouse location in Jersey City. If there was a creator that we brought on board that was in one of those markets or wanted to talk about one of those markets, we would totally support that. That goes back to that creator led strategy. It’s finding the creator not creating content for specific markets.
John Mamola: When I think of Jomboy Media, I think of video first. When you’re talking about the podcast space for Jomboy Media, I think more of a video product. Podcasting today, you could talk about video, and you can talk about audio. Either way, it’s podcasting.
I read an interview you did just a couple months ago where you said the partnership Jomboy Media did with iHeartMedia helped you put more of a focus on the audio product as a company. Do you see the audio portion of podcasting more of a focus now, as opposed to just putting the effort into video? Or is it a split in focus or more about how can Jomboy Media improve the video product because the audio product will always come with it?
Courtney Hirsch: It’s for sure the latter. We’re all about optimizing and focusing on the video product. I think that’s how we were born, and that’s one of the advantages. We weren’t an audio podcast network without video. We’re overloaded with video.
When other networks say ‘hey, we’re adding video’. we’re like, what? That’s just how we were born, so our brains don’t work that way. It’s video first, and then we put something up on audio.
You just don’t have as many tools, and there’s not as much data to optimize against an audio product. It’s harder to make optimizations, and I just think video is the future and you could do so much more with video. The long form and the short form caters to different audiences on all platforms. That is our focus and will continue to be our focus.
I really believe in the future of YouTube. I think that is where our strongest community lies. As we grow, I am protective of keeping that YouTube community and that core community intact.
John Mamola: Is there any concern on your end as CEO because now you’re relying on third party entities to distribute your content (such as YouTube and social media) instead of having it all in house and on your IP or website? I don’t think YouTube’s folding anytime soon. TikTok might go away or it may not.
Are there any concerns with using third parties like that at all?
Courtney Hirsch: No. I think we’re focused on capturing attention. Whatever platforms viewers or our audience wants to consume we’ll adapt. If TikTok goes away, we’ll move more on Instagram. Maybe a new platform comes up, and we’ll go there. Our team is so quick and nimble that we can capture the attention whatever platform is, you know, the moment in time.
John Mamola: Let’s talk about the addition of Chris Rose coming over from the MLB Network. He has a lot of respect in the business, and tons of relationships. He’s networked well over the years. I watched one of his videos that he shot at spring training camps across Arizona, and it was hilarious.
Chris is getting access that very few people get, which is very valuable to the Jomboy Media brand. Talk about the impact of having a guy like Chris Rose on the Jomboy Media brand.
Courtney Hirsch: We’re lucky to have Chris Rose as part of the team. I think he brings us a lot of validation in the space. He is highly respected from external partners and brand sponsors. They all are excited to work with him. He is a true professional.
He knows to come in with high energy and make really high-quality content, delivering exactly what he needs for the advertisers. He is a great role model for the younger creators that are coming up in the space. He treats everything with such care, but he’s also so down to earth and kind to every single person in this company.
He’s just an unbelievable asset to have. We still pinch ourselves that Chris Rose is the voice of the Warehouse Games. How lucky are we to have such a professional in such a quirky, fun environment.
John Mamola: Last question for you. What is one thing you know now about the podcasting space that you wish you knew ten or fifteen years ago, or when you started in podcasting?
Courtney Hirsch: It is what you make of it. You have to put in a lot of effort to grow a show. You can’t look at it as I’m just going to do this podcast, and I’m going to be live on air for an hour. It’s about all the other things that you have to do to build a show.
It’s about the short form and being on all the social media platforms. It’s about bringing community together, having real relationships with people one on one. It’s just an all-encompassing thing. It’s not similar to appearing on this TV show for 30 minutes and talking about sports.
No, it kind of takes over your life. That’s the best way to grow a show. Focus on the community aspect of it.
To learn more about Point-To-Point Marketing’s Podcast and Broadcast Audience Development Marketing strategies, contact Tim Bronsil at tim@ptpmarketing.com or 513-702-5072.
John Mamola is the sports editor and columnist for Barrett Media. He brings over two decades of experience (Chicago, Tampa/St Petersburg) in the broadcast industry with expertise in brand management, sales, promotions, producing, imaging, hosting, talent coaching, talent development, web development, social media strategy and design, video production, creative writing, partnership building, communication/networking with a long track record of growth and success. Honored to be a five-time recognized top 20 program director in a major market via Barrett Media and honored internally multiple times as station/brand of the year (Tampa, FL) and employee of the month (Tampa, FL). Connect with John by email at John@BarrettMedia.com.
