Meadowlark Looks to Sell Podcasts and Docuseries to Major Streamers

Meadowlark Media CEO John Skipper sees a market among the major streaming companies for complementary sports content, and his company intends to fill it. 

Founded by former ESPN president Skipper and former ESPN personality Dan Le Batard, Meadowlark is launching five new podcasts and planning more audio and video content, namely docuseries and unscripted content. 

Skipper told Bloomberg that podcasts are relatively cheap to produce, but that the space is “very crowded” and video has a much larger market.

• The podcast advertising market will roughly double this year, reaching $1.5 billion to $2 billion, from $850 million in 2020, Skipper said.
• He predicted the podcast market would grow to between $10 billion and $15 billion, as the $20+ billion terrestrial radio industry shifts over to podcasts.
• Skipper put the video content market at $200 billion to $300 billion, saying it “clearly is the bigger target.”

Skipper helped bring the ten-part docuseries “The Last Dance” to ESPN, which, with an average of 5.6 million viewers per episode, was ESPN’s most watched documentary of all time. 

Skipper was DAZN’s executive chairman from May 2018 through this January but said that the sports streaming company’s model of broadcasting niche sports is not viable.

“What works is top-of-the-pyramid rights that people have to see,” he said.