Meet The Leaders: Chris Balfe, Chief Executive Officer, Red Seat Ventures

Meet The Leaders is a special 8-week series created in partnership with Point to Point Marketing. Our third feature is on the Chief Executive Officer at Red Seat Ventures, Chris Balfe. Follow along with the series and revisit former conversations by checking out the entire category. 

With over 23 years of experience working with creators in the digital media space, Chris Balfe has helped pioneer the direct-to-consumer model for talent looking to make immediate impact. He co-founded Red Seat Ventures in 2015 alongside his brother, Kevin. Chris has worked with some of the most influential creators in the world across all formats, helping them launch, grow, and monetize their independent media businesses.  

In this edition of “Meet The Leaders,” we dive into the strategy of Red Seat Ventures as a partner, including the decision to never be involved in editorial with creators. We touch on the success of building the Red Seat Ventures talent roster, Fox acquiring the company earlier this year, and the company’s push into the sports content space partnering with Craig Carton, Robert Griffin III, and others. 

Balfe spoke with Barrett Media from his office in New York City. 

*Editor’s Note: Answers have been edited for clarity and length.* 

John Mamola: The business model of Red Seat Ventures is interesting because it’s built around serving the creator as opposed to focusing on content. Let’s start with the decision to stray away from the actual content creation side and prioritize everything in the background. Why do you believe in that approach?

Chris Balfe: At scale, that’s the only way we can do it. If you’re working closely with one talent, being engaged in every aspect of it from content to editorial strategy is the only way to do it. You really need to be engaged on every level.

When you switch hats and become a little bit more focused on the network side, that’s when you must take a step back from the editorial and say, ‘I’m not living this every day’.

I’m not driving to work, sitting in the prep meetings or sitting at the dinner table with this talent. That’s what it takes to be able to provide useful content strategy and editorial-type suggestions. You have to live and breathe the content.

From our perch, doing 20 shows and hopefully doing 200 shows, we could never have that level of connectivity to each of the shows. It’s better for us to say, you’ve got your content, you’ve got your editorial. Our job is to help you grow it and monetize it.

John Mamola: When it comes to working with or scouting creators you want to work with, are there minimum guidelines that you look for as far as metrics? Or is the preferred method for business that the creator approaches you?

Chris Balfe: Most come to us through word of mouth. Either they’ve talked to an existing client, and they’ve referred them. We’ve been so fortunate to have so many of our clients send us other folks, which is awesome. It’s always the best way to do it.

We’re sitting here in a time period where the barrier to entry on podcasting and YouTube is zero. Your computer comes with a microphone and a webcam. To me, it’s less I have this idea; it’s more, here’s what we are doing. Here’s what the viewership or download numbers are like. Do you think you can help us get it to the next level or improve monetization, strategy, distribution, or whatever?

There are obviously things that we can do, given our role in the industry, that are helpful. But we can’t help you turn the camera on. I guess we can, but they don’t need our help with that.

It’s much more interesting to us to look at people who are doing—saying, wow! They’ve taken the initiative, and they’ve found an audience. We can help them take it to the next level instead of someone who says, I’d like to start a podcast. Then why haven’t you?

John Mamola: Looking at your roster of creators, there’s a mix of high profile personalities across all genres. Sports appears to be a key part of your business plan, but there’s an intersection with news talk programming too. Is the business strategy to lean on the success model from high profile creators to attract new creators? Are there any challenges with creators not wanting to explore relationships due to talent being involved with opposite political leanings?

Chris Balfe: We want to be in business with great creators. Politics is not the driving factor. Particularly now, as we look to expand aggressively across all genres, including sports, comedy, and lifestyle. We’re not sitting here saying we’re only interested in folks who are one persuasion or another.

To the second part of your question: certainly, it will take some guts for someone who’s looking at our roster and saying, do I want to be the first, second, or third one in the boat that’s not fully aligned with the existing roster?

We’re getting those folks. Robert Griffin III, Craig Carton are both with us. So, I think people are starting to realize these guys are serious about broadening their client list. They’ve obviously been successful up till now, so let’s take that risk.

I don’t think it’s much of a risk, to be honest. Ultimately, we’re part of a big company. We’re part of the Tubi media group, which deals with everybody on all sides. We’re part of Fox, which has Fox Sports and Fox Entertainment.

Realistically, I don’t think it’s a huge risk. I do appreciate any brave folks who are willing to be among the first to come to us in that regard.

John Mamola: Going back to not being involved in the editorial or the creation process. Is there a risk with that potentially? Certain creators may go a little bit too far on certain topics regardless of format. How do you balance that with Red Seat Ventures?

Chris Balfe: Red Seat Ventures is a service provider. You must really start thinking about these associations that people create in their own minds around service providers.

If someone I don’t like uses Verizon, is that Verizon’s fault? The content is representative of the people who are producing the content. We’re a partner, a network, and a business associate for these folks. It’s our job to do the best that we can for them from the perspective of growth, marketing, and all the other services that they may choose to use us for.

I’m very much not in the censorship business.

John Mamola: From a sports perspective, Red Seat Ventures recently paired up with Craig Carton. How did the idea come about to work with Carton on a sports podcast?

Chris Balfe: It’s sort of our re-entry into the sports space more than anything. We were anxious to work with Craig Carton. I’ve lived in New York since 2006. One of my great friends is maybe the biggest WFAN fan in the world. WFAN is a core part of my growing up listening to the [Don] Imus in the morning.

Radio is certainly in my blood, and Craig is the ultimate sports radio host. The opportunity to work with Craig [Carton] was easy. I couldn’t say yes fast enough.

John Mamola: You’re a long-time FAN guy. Were you stunned that the success that he had on WFAN didn’t necessarily translate to television?

Chris Balfe: Not really, because linear TV is so regimented. It’s so different from what we do. It’s completely the opposite in a lot of ways.

We’re all about talent control. We work for them. They don’t work for us. They wake up in the morning and do the show they want to do. Then that show’s success either succeeds or fails based on its own merits.

In TV, it’s almost the opposite in many cases. Here’s the format, the co-hosts, and what time it’s on. All these other things that are the world that you have to live in in order to make this show.

Craig is a radio guy. They want to do the show they want to do. That’s what we’re able to do with the new show. This is Craig Unfiltered. I don’t get into the editorial, and that’s true in news and it’s true in sports too. We let him pick every component of this show, and we’re here to help it grow, distribute it, and monetize it.

John Mamola: How has the response been so far?

Chris Balfe: Really strong. We’re starting off great out of the gate again. Whenever you have somebody that’s got proven success as Craig has had, you’re kind of starting with an unfair advantage versus an unknown that may be incredibly talented.

Our sales team is on the phone with advertisers saying, you got to buy The Joe Blow Show, and they’re like, who’s Joe Blow? Craig has demonstrated success to audiences. He’s demonstrated success to advertisers. One of the advantages that we have in working with radio people versus people from TV is radio people know that part of their job is to sell product. Craig totally gets that.

John Mamola: Is the plan to use Carton’s example to lure other sports creators?

Chris Balfe: Sports is an area where Fox gives us a huge leg up in partnering with FOX Sports on FS1, also in partnering with the broader Fox broadcast network and the rights that they have for college games, car racing, and these sports rights that they have on the network itself.

There’s an opportunity for us to work with creators who are experts in that space, but then to turn around and allow them access to the biggest platform in the world, which is broadcast television. That’s another place where we have an unfair advantage in partnering with Fox. Ultimately, you’re going to see us becoming a very big player in the sports space.

John Mamola: In February, Fox Corporation acquired Red Seat Ventures. That is a huge success for you and the company. How did the acquisition come about?

Chris Balfe: There’s a senior executive with Fox named Paul Cheesbrough. He reached out to me on Twitter.

We had been talking to Piers Morgan, who had a long relationship with News Corp. Piers was thinking about going independently and sharing that view internally. That piqued the kind of curiosity of folks there, but also they had already been monitoring the space—thinking about how does Fox make a bigger play in the creator economy. I think those two things aligned, and Paul reached out.

We had an amazing first conversation, and several conversations after that. Fox demonstrated who they are and how aggressive they can be. From the first moment we spoke to the deal being closed was two months or something.

It was an insanely fast process, and both sides kind of knew that there was an amazing match here. An opportunity to do something together that’s much bigger.

John Mamola: With the acquisition by Fox, how does that help your role of going out and collaborating with or attracting creators to work with Red Seat Ventures?

Chris Balfe: I think there’s a real opportunity for us here because I think the creator economy is thriving. Podcasting is thriving. The role that we can play in thinking about the next steps from here.

Great creators have had an amazing run. YouTube is on fire, but now let’s think about monetization across other platforms. Let’s think about distribution so that maybe we’re not completely dependent just on YouTube and podcasting.

In those ways, being part of Fox and having access to our friends at Tubi and Fox One, all of the resources of the various Fox networks including FOX Sports, there’s just a lot of potential synergy for us to bring to the table for talent to say to them, do you want to play a bigger role in some of these platforms that might be giving you additional visibility, eyeballs, monetization, and other things that you couldn’t otherwise get?

I think Red Seat really has a chance of being the next-generation network or next-generation provider for A-list talent. That’s certainly our goal.

John Mamola: Since the acquisition, what’s been your personal biggest change to your day-to-day?

Chris Balfe: The biggest change is going from a business that was effectively owned by me and Kevin [Balfe], therefore sort of thinking about things from the perspective of if we make this decision or that decision, how does it impact our personal economics and the economics of the business.

Over the next six months, if we make this hire, are we going to have enough money to do these other things that we might want to do?

The biggest change is the ask from Fox to think big—to say, how do we make this the number one company in the creator economy, not just sort of scale it linearly based on what you and Kevin [Balfe] can afford to do?

That means I wake up every day and start thinking about how do we grow much more quickly than was our previous plan? How do we provide even better service to our current clients, while also being aggressive about our new clients?

We announced that we hired Rena Ayer from SiriusXM, who had been in charge of podcast acquisition for them. She had been one of their premium podcast acquisition people. Now she’s our leading content person.

We’re going to be really aggressive in signing new talent. Rena is going to be a big part of that. That’s a major change. Not that we weren’t thinking about new talent before, but now we’re thinking about it every moment of the day.

John Mamola: FOX Sports struck a partnership recently with Barstool Sports. I don’t know if this applies at all, but does that new partnership between the two brands open up any possibilities for Red Seat to work with Barstool Sports on future projects?

Chris Balfe: We’d love to do more with Barstool [Sports]. We’re big fans of everything they’ve built so far. We haven’t gone down that road. They’ve built such an amazing growth and monetization engine themselves. Certainly, always hopeful that there’s an opportunity for us to work more closely with them.

John Mamola: With FOX One, what possibilities exist for Red Seat Ventures there?

Chris Balfe: Great example. We’ve already operationalized one deal, which is Nancy Grace. Nancy’s our first client, and I love working with Nancy. She’s amazing, and I think that we were able to bring to Fox One an exclusive window. When you watch Crime Stories, the only place to watch Crime Stories for the first 24 hours was on Fox One.

Creative ways for us to be a place for Fox One and for Tubi to go to get top creators and get access to top creators. Also being a place for us to be able to bring top creators those additional distribution opportunities.

That’s something that works both ways to everybody’s advantage. It’s a unique component of the type of business that we can create that I think others can’t.

John Mamola: You manage a lot of high-profile personalities and shows with Red Seat Ventures. How do you continue to expand when you have this massive roster that you’re trying to ensure every one of them is taken care of while attempting to expand?

Chris Balfe: I say it all the time, we’re in the talent business. If we don’t do a good job, they’ll find someone who will. It’s up to them to make that decision on a regular basis to say, is Red Seat Ventures the best place for me? It’s my job to make sure the answer is yes. To me, it doesn’t come down as much to egos as it comes down to doing an amazing job for our clients.

John Mamola: What’s the most fun part of your job as CEO of Red Seat Ventures?

Chris Balfe: I love doing new things. One of the reasons that we’re a good partner for creators is because we’ve done a lot of this a number of times. That’s all fun, and we love doing that.

What’s really fun is somebody who comes to us and says, I want to do something completely different, try something that no one’s ever tried, and we’re negotiating a deal that’s outside the bounds of the things that I’ve been doing for the last 23 years.

In my new job at Fox, I’m doing a lot of that. Doing a lot of deals that are much more cross-medium, including different parts of the company that take advantage of the strengths of Fox overall. These are the types of things that, again, when it’s just me and a few folks, we can’t even dream of doing. New stuff is fun.

John Mamola: Red Seat Ventures was named after the red seat at Fenway Park where Ted Williams hit the longest home run in Fenway Park history. What do you want to see more from Red Seat Ventures in the next six months to a year, as far as expanding into the sports content space?

Chris Balfe: We have an opportunity again to say, how do we improve a creator’s reach and revenue? You’re hiring us to improve your reach and revenue, and we have to be able to do that.

As we look at the whole life cycle of creator monetization and say, what are the other ways that we can help you grow your business—from subscription to social media, sales to live events, and licensing the show to third parties.

I think we look at this holistically and say, reach and revenue, yes.

Ultimately, being the best partner for creators means being able to solve their problems or bring them opportunities across all of the areas where they can be successful. That’s the way. That’s the part that I’m excited about building—being the best partner for these folks.

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.