As Thanksgiving is in the rear-view 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—are a juggernaut in the genre.
Top Sports Podcasts
- New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
- Pardon My Take
- The Bill Simmons Podcast
- Fantasy Footballers – Fantasy Football Podcast
- The MeatEater Podcast
- The Pat McAfee Show
- Jesser
- The Ryen Russillo Podcast
- National Park After Dark
- 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 over 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 (US)
- Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight
- Open by Andre Agassi
- Endure: How to Work Hard, Outlast, and Keep Hammering by Cameron Hanes
- How to Build a Car: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Formula 1 Designer by Adrian Newey
- Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
- The Baseball 100 by Joe Posnanski
- Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable by Tim S. Grover, Shari Wenk
- The Rise of the Ultra Runners by Adharanand Finn
- Tiger Woods by Jeff Benedict, Armen Keteyian
- 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.
