As Thanksgiving is in the rearview mirror and the calendar hits December, you know it’s about to be Spotify Wrapped season and that your social media will be filled with summaries of what people listened to over the past year.

This year, the streaming giant revealed exclusively to Front Office Sports its top 10 sports podcasts and audiobooks of the year.

There are no big surprises in the top three of the sports podcast list, but then it starts to get interesting. Fantasy football content has endured even after the widespread adoption of sports gambling, and the Fantasy Footballers—No. 4 on the list—is a juggernaut in the genre. 

Top Sports Podcasts

1. New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce

2. Pardon My Take

3. The Bill Simmons Podcast

4. Fantasy Footballers – Fantasy Football Podcast

5. The MeatEater Podcast

6. The Pat McAfee Show

7. Jesser

8. The Ryen Russillo Podcast

9. National Park After Dark

10. Bussin’ With The Boys

The outdoors space has more representation than the meat-and-potatoes sports fan would necessarily realize with The MeatEater Podcast (which covers topics like hunting and fishing) and National Park After Dark, which “explores the darker side of our National Parks.” Jesser, hosted by Jesse Riedel, is a 26-year-old uber-popular basketball content creator on YouTube, with more than 35 million subscribers. His shows frequently feature sports-related challenges. (Last year’s list of top sports podcasts had slightly different criteria, focusing on most-searched podcasts, but seven of the top 10 for 2025 were the same as last year’s.)

Top Sports Audiobooks (U.S.)

1. Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight

2. Open by Andre Agassi

3. Endure: How to Work Hard, Outlast, and Keep Hammering by Cameron Hanes

4. How to Build a Car: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Formula 1 Designer by Adrian Newey

5. Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

6. The Baseball 100 by Joe Posnanski

7. Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable by Tim S. Grover, Shari Wenk

8. The Rise of the Ultra Runners by Adharanand Finn

9. Tiger Woods by Jeff Benedict, Armen Keteyian

10. Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger

The interesting thing about the audiobooks list is that the category is evergreen. For example, Shoe Dog came out in 2016, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s book was published in 2012, and Open in 2010. In fact, none of the books on this list actually came out this year. 

Another big takeaway: People love audiobooks about running. Endure, Born to Run, and The Rise of the Ultra Runners make up three of the top 10 audiobooks, and Relentless is also about physical fitness.

Malika Andrews is the leading candidate to become ESPN’s lead WNBA studio host after the departure of Elle Duncan, sources told Front Office Sports. 

No deal has been finalized, and a spokesperson for ESPN declined to comment.

The Athletic first reported that Duncan is poised to leave ESPN to become the face of Netflix’s sports studio coverage. Her time with ESPN is up at the end of the year. Duncan also hosts 6 p.m. SportsCenter with Kevin Negandhi and has been the lead anchor of ESPN’s women’s college basketball coverage, including the Final Four.

Andrews is a natural choice for the WNBA role as she already began hosting coverage of the league for ESPN last year, including on its opening night. She is the lead host of NBA Today and NBA Countdown, the latter of which is scaled back this season as ESPN is licensing Inside the NBA with Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal, Kenny Smith, and host Ernie Johnson from TNT. 

Andrews has also resumed her role as an NBA sideline reporter for ESPN this season. 

It was not immediately known what ESPN’s plan is for women’s college basketball or 6 p.m. SportsCenter after Duncan departs. 

ESPN has saved its 35-year relationship with MLB. But the network’s updated game schedule may come at the cost of its best baseball analyst: David Cone.

Over the past three seasons, Cone has teamed with Eduardo Pérez and Karl Ravech to give ESPN its finest Sunday Night Baseball broadcast booth in years. 

But under ESPN’s new three-year, $550 million MLB deal, its game schedule will shift to midweek from Sunday nights from 2026 to 2028. That might make Cone’s ESPN schedule incompatible with his duties at the YES Network, where the five-time World Series champion calls Yankees games with Paul O’Neill. 

For example, if Cone’s calling a midweek game for ESPN, he probably can’t work a midweek Yankee series on YES. It would also make travel more difficult when Cone’s calling weekend games for YES.

Cone’s current deal with ESPN is due to expire around the start of MLB’s new 2026 season, sources say. “ESPN loves Cone—and wants to keep him. But juggling the two network schedules is going to be difficult,” one source tells Front Office Sports. “We’ll see how it works out.”

On the other hand, the former Yankees star is locked in at YES for the upcoming season, according to Jared Boshnack, executive producer and VP of production. In fact, Boshnack has penciled Cone in for more than the 40-game telecasts he called last season.

“David is phenomenal. He makes our team better,” Boshnack told FOS on Wednesday. “We’re very happy to have him.” 

Boshnack is not alone. A growing number of baseball insiders believe the 62-year-old Cone is the best baseball analyst on TV, ahead of Fox’s No. 1 John Smoltz. If his deal with ESPN doesn’t work out, Cone could hit the market with propitious timing.

Via its own three-year, $600 million deal with MLB, NBC Sports has picked up ESPN’s old Sunday Night Baseball TV rights. The network will be in the market for a star game analyst for its Sunday night package, as well as newly acquired properties such as the wild-card playoff round.

Don’t forget about deep-pocketed Netflix, which forged its own three-year, $150 million pact with MLB to show an Opening Night game, Home Run Derby, and the 2026 Field of Dreams games.  

As evidenced by Netflix’s recent hire of Elle Duncan from ESPN, the giant streamer is finally ready to invest in long-term on-air talent rather than borrowing broadcasters from rival legacy networks. Both ESPN and Fox have had enough of that, barring their NFL talent from working Netflix’s Christmas Day doubleheader. 

ESPN declined to comment on Cone, who could not be reached for comment.