An industry that has been hemorrhaging ad rates and laying off entire teams of trained professionals has managed to scrounge up more than $300 million to shuffle distribution rights for just three shows.
The outlandish size of these big swings is an indication of how vague and abstracted a game the biggest players in the podcast business are playing.
In theory these acquisitions should serve as a rising tide that lifts all the boats and brings awareness-and ad dollars-to the smaller shows in these networks.
I have a hard time imagining how Wondery and SiriusXM will manage to earn back even a fraction of these upfront investments. It's a bad business decision.
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