The National Basketball Association and iHeartMedia have announced a new slate of team-specific shows coming to the iHeart/NBA Podcast Network.
The new lineup includes original podcasts from six NBA teams — the Boston Celtics, Brooklyn Nets, Charlotte Hornets, Cleveland Cavaliers, New Orleans Pelicans and San Antonio Spurs. The shows will be hosted by top NBA analysts, hosts, announcers, cultural influencers involved with the organizations.
Will Pearson, President for the iHeartPodcast Network, and David Denenberg, NBA Senior Vice President and Head of National & Local Network Partnerships, spoke exclusively with ClutchPoints about the new podcasting partnership, the plans for all 30 NBA teams, how podcasting has evolved over the last decade, and much more.
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Tomer Azarly: So what exactly is this new partnership between iHeart and the NBA and why was it important to get done?
Will Pearson: So for us at iHeart, even to just step back for a minute, as the largest Podcast Publisher in the country, we like to partner with the best in their respective categories. We may be thinking in comedy, workin with the Will Ferrell’s and Chelsea Handler’s of the world or in story-telling, with the Shonda Rhimes' of the world or in business with Bloomberg. When it comes to sports, we want to partner with the best of the best and personally, I grew up and a still a massive basketball fan. Have been a huge basketball fan my whole life, grew up as a big fan of the NBA, and so for me, here running the iHeartPodcast, it was a no-brainer when we had the opportunity to have a conversation with the leadership of the NBA about trying to bring together these two organizations. You have the premier league in all of basketball and one of the premier organizations in all of sports, hands down. And to be able to partner with them to help them tell their stories, you sort of bring the best of both, right? You bringing their knowledge, their access, and you’re working with the heart podcast network to be able to use our production team to be able to tap into our unmatched marketing resources and then of course on the sales side, so whenever we can find that perfect partnership where two premier organizations come together to do something fun, we’re always excited.
David Denenberg: I would say whether this was applying or whether this was just applying to the broader universe of podcasts, everybody wants something a little bit different, right? And so we try to make sure that we offer that great variety, which is why even if you look at the full slate of shows that we’ve started developing with the NBA, you’re gonna see some that are a little bit more focused on the actual games and the sport itself. You’re gonna see some that are a little bit more focused on what’s happening in the culture off the court, and we’re here to provide that for everybody. And you’re gonna have some that are a mix of both, but they’re great storylines regardless of which direction you’re looking.
Right now, you have six NBA teams with podcasts — How you envision the expansion to all 30 NBA teams?
Will Pearson: Yeah, so not only do we have those six teams but just even to back up for just a second, we also have the partnership where we develop shows that are sort of more national or world-wide shows in terms of focusing not just on individual teams, but several teams on that front as well, but in addition to that, we’re partnering to bring each of the organizations, each of the team in the order that they’re ready to jump in, into the network so I think you’re referencing teams like the Brooklyn Bets, San Antonio Spurs, Cleveland Cavaliers, Charlotte Hornets, New Orleans Pelicans, Boston Celtics, and then there’s others that we can’t speak to just yet until it’s official, but the idea is to keep bringing more and more teams into the network.
David Denenberg: I think we’ll add them organically as we go along. Those six raised their hands pretty quickly and wanted to be part of kind of this beta, but I anticipate continuing to add teams as the relationship continues. Our concede here is that, as you know, discoverability is hard, but as we try to if we kinda harness all of what the teams are doing under the NBA-iHeart umbrella, in addition to the offerings that iHeart is producing themselves, we think that’s one and one will equal three.
What drove this interest between the NBA and iHeartMedia?
Will Pearson: What’s interesting is every medium of communication has its own advantages, it’s own reasons for existing, social media is more quick, it’s more sort of bite-sized, it’s more sort of get something in and out, be entertaining, and move on. And podcasting, we really focus on storytelling. We rally focus on conversation, and there’s so many incredible personalities and stories and things behind the scenes and sort of long-running knowledge around the sport, and that interest in keeping up with everything that’s happening within the sport both on the court and off the court, and so podcasting for us became a way to try to help the NBA tell many of these stories. To get personalities to talk about everything from what NBA’s influence on the culture might be to who the greatest athletes are within the game to what the best stories are at the time so there’s a little bit more of an opporuntity to do a bit of a lean back and tell some of these stories in ways that make you can’t do as easily through other mediums.
David Denenberg: We’ve been leaders in the digital media space, but we haven’t up until the iHeart relationship had — we’ve had individual teams with podcasts, but we wanted to create a central network to let fans know this is where you go for NBA podcasts, and iHeart was a perfect partner for that. They have the production chops, obviously the sales organization to get this done, and most importantly, the distribution that we want, Will talked about getting to the fans and it’s really important. We have a really young, digitally savvy fanbase, and we wanna make sure we’re reaching them in all areas so this was an important new initiative for us and we’re really happy with how it’s going so far, but look for us to do more and more in this area.
Is this NBA-iHeartPodcast partnership going to be a strictly audio podcast or will there be a video component to this as well?
Will Pearson: We do a mix of both, right now it’s primarily audio in our partnership with the NBA, but at the end of the day, we are ultimately an audio first company. That’s our first priority is telling stories through audio. So sometimes that makes sense, with video companions to those, and other times the focus is solely on audio.
Where do you see this going in two or three years?
Will Pearson: Well both on sort of the league all up-side, and on the individual organization side, we wanna continue adding shows and building community and building conversation around what’s happening in the game of basketball, so every year, we’ll be developing and launching new shows with the NBA and bringing new teams into this as well. Ultimately, what we’re trying to build is a sort of the official location for any huge fans of basketball in general or individual teams to be able to jump in and find the perfect podcast for them.
There are so many podcasts out there that people consume on a daily basis, especially in the sports world. How are you finding the podcasts that fit best?
Will Pearson: Well a big part of our mission at iHeart is to make sure that we give each audience what they’re looking for. So back to the earlier point, you might have one fan that is mostly interested in what exactly happened in the league this week in terms of the games, what the competition looked like, who’s playing well, who beat who, those sort of like very tactical, the real storyline of what happened on the court. Then you also have fans that have that desire to get to know the organization a little bit better, get to know the teams a little bit better, get to know the individual players a little bit better and tell some of those amazing stories off the court as well. If you think about it, your’e working with, it’s a league full of some of the most phenomenal humans out there because they're people who have worked so hard to get to this level that by that nature, you’re working with people who are gonna be incredibly interesting people, both on and off the court, so you have some people who are interested in listening to podcasts that may focus a little bit on the human side of it all.
How have the ways that fans consumed content affected the podcasting world?
Will Pearson: With respect to podcasts, we see it all as highly complementary. What we’ve seen happen over the past decade plus within the NBA, and I say this as a fan, the exciting part is you have access to stories in ways that we haven’t always had, right? Growing up as a kid, it was basically like you watched them on TV, and maybe I could find a story that was written about it in sports illustrated or somewhere else and that was always exciting to see, but now it feels like we have access in a way that hasn’t always been there, so whether it’s social media just getting to see those quick clips or getting to see a quick interview of somebody is always fun the day after a game. It’s always great to see and of course I’m a huge fan of documentaries on the sports side as well, and seeing what’s happening with the players and kind of learning about their stories, for podcasting, those things only teeth everything up for us. It’s just sort of heightening the awareness of the amazing stories that are happening within the NBA, the incredible players, incredible personalities that are performing at such a high level. Fans have become more and more aware of each of them because they have greater access, which gives us the opportunity too step in and as we do things that are a little bit more long-form, to tell all of these kinds of stories that we’re talking about. For us, we love the fact that there are other media and other opportunities for fans to be able to consume in different ways.
David Denenberg: Yeah I totally agree. First of all, we’re really excited about this relationship. I don’t think it’s a secret that we’ve been the leaders on the digital and social media front for a long time, the NBA, we’ve been out there on all the platforms and we’re kinda just getting our feet wet with podcasting through his iHeart relationship, and as Will said, we’re really excited about the breadth of different programs that we’re offering. We’re definitely focused on things like story-telling and I think you’ll see more of that as we roll out more shows, but even the new Maxey show that’s out there, I’m really excited about, personally. Players giving kind of their personal view of things, so we’re kind of experimenting frankly. We’re gonna see what works and double down on that, but like I said, this is a pretty new initiative for us but we’re really excited about it.
Will NBA teams or iHeart choose who they want and make them members of the team?
David Denenberg: I mean listen, that’s the goal, not every team is even doing podcasts right now, but many of them are and I think as I said, as this sort of just started, we just made this available to teams so its six that kind of raised their hands right away. I expect more and more to join as they frankly see the benefits of being within a broader network as opposed to a one-off or they might otherwise be. I do expect more and more teams to join the fold.
How have player-driven podcasts affected the podcasting world?
David Denenberg: Personally, I think its terrific. Our players really resonate with fans. They're recognizable to the fans, they’re not wearing a helmet, they’re not wearing a hat, so people know our players are. And I think it’s great that they have a direct voice to their fans and will can talk a little bit about this, one of our new shows involving a player directly. So we absolutely wanna facilitate players being able to talk to their fans. We think they have great insights to share and unique perspectives rather than talking heads talking about the players, this is a player talking and telling you his story himself. I think it’s terrific, hopefully we’ll continue to do that and see more.
Will Pearson: It’s hard to beat the show that actually goes behind-the scenes with a player. David mentioned this earlier, but, ‘Maxey on the Mic,' the show that we do with the Sixers guard Tyrese Maxey, comes in and sort of using this format of an audio diary allows us to go behind-the-scenes and hear a little bit more and it’s not just reactions to what happened in each game, it’s talking about pop culture, it’s talking about what practices is like, it’s talking about what the team does off hours, how they bond together, how they play together, it really sort of gives you that view into their lives in a way that few other things can and there’s something about the art of podcasting that sort of creates this very intimate experience. Just think about your own experience listening to a podcast. You got the earbuds in, you’re on your way to work, you’re on a jog, you’re cooking dinner, and it sort of beings you into that world and provides sort of an intimate scene that is hard to get otherwise. Those are some of my favorite kinds of podcasts, are those behind the scenes ones.
A lot of times in these days, people listen and gain interest in podcasts by consuming bites on social media. How do you think this snippet-driven social content impacts podcasting?
Will Pearson: it’s all complementary. You know sometimes, you’re taking a quick break after you’ve just finished a meeting and you’re off to lunch or something like that and you’re a huge fan so you kinda stop in to just see what’s happening in the league or you're on a social media platform. It’s great to see a couple of those, whether that’s an amazing clip of something that happened in a game last night or whether it’s just a funny comment that a player made or a conversation that the player had after an incredible game in an interview, so it has its place o kind of see those kinds of things, but then people are wanting something a little bit more, those big fans that want something that’s more of a deeper dive, a little bit more of a lean-back experience, when maybe they have their half-hour. All of it has its place, it’s just for us, the goal is to go a little bit deeper, and to have sort of that longer form to what we do.
Lastly, just want both of your opinions on why is podcasting so important for the league and for the sports world in general?
David Denenberg: It’s really important to reach our digitally savvy, young fanbase and this is another medium that up until now, we haven’t exploited, so it’s really important to us to be able to reach those fans and we’re doing it on social, we’re doing it on our app and digital, but up until now, we hadn’t been doing it really in a coordinated way in podcasting and that’s why like I said, I’m so excited about this relationship because I think just bringing together the power of the NBA and hearts production and distribution capabilities, we can really establish ourselves in the podcasting area, and make sure that we’re serving the millions of people listening to podcasts. We wanna make sure NBA fans are getting the ability to experience podcasts for content that they want to hear. Not just going to our social outlets and our app, so I think it’s really important. Really excited about this partnership.
Will Pearson: I would just echo that. Our goal as a podcast network is to tell the best stories in the world, to be able t get people access to the people they find most interesting, whatever the category, and so when people are interested in the sport of basketball and some of the most phenomenal athletes and personalities on the planet, what better place to go than NBA, and so we’re thrilled to be partners and finding ways to tell these stories and new and different ways both on the court, off the court, so for us, it was a no brainer when this opportunity came up.
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