The Video Window Gets Priced: Shetty's $100M, Barstool on Netflix, and a Baseline Worth Questioning

Reid MercerNine figures for a show you can already watch for free. Hold on. Sit with that for a second. Welcome to the show. I'm Reid Mercer, and I spend my days pricing audio assets so you don't have to overpay for them. Quick background, and no, this isn't a fresh headline. Back in May, Forbes reported, citing Bloomberg, that Jay Shetty struck a deal with Netflix and Spotify worth up to a hundred million dollars. We covered it then. I'm bringing it back because it leaves two questions sitting on the table, and I got a call about one of them this week. Oh, man. The first one is simple: What is the buyer actually buying? Audience? Exclusivity? A window on a screen? Second one is nastier. Is the number everyone measures these deals against even measuring the right thing? Think of this as a briefing, not a breaking news alert. Two questions, a few checks at the end, and then you can go price something with a clearer head. Short sentences, I know. The answers are longer. First, the baseline everyone is measuring against. Start with the number the whole industry quotes. The IAB and PwC full-year twenty twenty-five US podcast ad revenue at about two point nine billion dollars. Growth was seventeen point six percent year-over-year. That's the exact figure, and it's the one I'll commit to. I can already hear the objection. Seventeen percent sounds like a party. It is. For a decade-old medium, double-digit growth is nothing to apologize for. Picture radio in the nineties when every consolidator dreamed of that kind of line. But read the footnote because the footnote is where I live. The report says that figure uses the traditional audio-based definition of a podcast, and it says that definition is expanding because video is becoming the leading channel for podcast consumption. Read that again slowly. The people who built the baseline are telling you the baseline has an aging definition. The consumption moved. The yardstick is still audio. One sentence in a report, and it quietly changes what the headline number can tell you, which is a little like measuring cable's health by counting antenna sales. Now a caveat on my own side. You will see bigger numbers floating around for twenty twenty-six. Four billion in change gets tossed about on some sites. I'm not using them. I can't verify them, and a number I can't trace is just a pitch deck with better fonts. So here's what I'm holding: two point nine billion audio-defined from the source that has the paper trail. What I'm not claiming is that the report is wrong. It isn't. It measures what it says it measures. The question is whether that thing is still the whole market, and that's my inference, not theirs. The report hands you the definition and the video line. I'm the one connecting them to deal pricing. Think about what a buyer does with a baseline. They benchmark. They ask what a show should earn, what a CPM should look like, what a multiple should be, all of it anchored to audio. Then a deal shows up where the value sits on a screen. The anchor doesn't fit. You're either overpaying against it or underpricing the asset. Let me make that concrete because a benchmark only matters when somebody is leaning on it. A buyer walks into a negotiation holding a number from a respected report. The seller walks in holding a different story, usually one that happens on a screen. Whoever's frame the room accepts sets the starting point, and the starting point does most of the work. Radio people lived this. Everyone priced off a handful of yardsticks, and anything the yardstick couldn't see got treated as a rounding error right up until it wasn't. Cable had its own version. Packages were priced on what the package could count, and whatever sat outside the count was somebody else's problem. So who gets hurt by an aging definition? Not the people holding the paper. It's the people who treat the audio line as the ceiling and negotiate accordingly. And the seller who knows the yardstick is stale has the edge. They can point at the gap and ask the buyer to price what the ruler can't see. To be clear, I'm not telling you the audio number is bloated. The issue is what it leaves out. Hold that thought because the next deals make the question a lot sharper. And that's exactly where the interesting deals are living right now. Now the deals that live outside that definition. Start with Barstool because Netflix wrote the terms down itself. Its own announcement describes a multi-year deal that began in early twenty twenty-six. Video episodes of Pardon My Take, The Ryan Russillo Podcast, and Spittin' Chiclets stream exclusively on Netflix. Audio stays on all major podcast platforms. Read that last line twice. It's a clean split. The ears stay everywhere. The eyes go to one address. Radio people used to call that a simulcast. This is the opposite. Now the Shetty side. Forbes reported in May that the video episodes of On Purpose moved to Netflix and Spotify on July thirteenth. Older episodes and promotional clips stay on YouTube. That detail matters more than the date. The back catalog and the clips stay on the free platform. The new video goes behind the wall. The free platform becomes the trailer. For a viewer scrolling past a clip, the clip now points somewhere else. Same architecture as Barstool, different packaging. Audio is open. Fresh video is exclusive.

Speaker 2Let's work the trade from each side because an exclusive is a swap, not a gift. What does the platform get? A reason for a viewer to show up at its address and nobody else's. Exclusivity is the product it's buying. What does the creator give up? Reach on the biggest open video platform for new episodes. What comes back? A check and presumably some promotional muscle from a buyer that wants the shows to land. I say presumably because the sources don't spell out the terms, and I won't fill them in. And the listener? In the Barstool setup, audio stays everywhere, so someone who only ever listened loses nothing. The viewer who wants the full video now has exactly one place to go. Here's a question I can't answer from the paperwork. Who sells the ads in a video window? That's the first thing I'd ask in the room. Forbes also noted the timing. The deal came as Shetty's iHeartMedia ad sales deal lapsed. You ready for this? It framed it as one of the first major ones from the Netflix-Spotify video podcast venture. And it said the deal shows talent and platform power shifting away from audio networks. That's Forbes' framing. I'd say the shift is already underway. Now I do what I always do with a bullish story. I ask about unit economics. What does a network give up in YouTube ad revenue when the video goes exclusive? I have no number. Nobody has handed me one, and I won't invent one. But the question has teeth. YouTube is where video podcasts monetize today, and an exclusive window turns that off for new episodes. So who pays for the gap? The platform writes a check. Does that check cover what the network was earning? Does it cover what the network would have earned next year? And does the network even see the video revenue it's walking away from in its own reporting? That one keeps me up. Because if the video dollars never showed up in the baseline, nobody's pricing what leaves. Here is the turn. When the window closes, who loses leverage, and what does that do to the baseline? To answer the question I left hanging, the network loses leverage first. Remember the timing Forbes flagged, the iHeartMedia ad sales deal lapsing as Shetty's deal arrived. And I'm treating that as timing, not cause. Ask who owns the thing the buyer actually wants. The ad sales house used to sit between the creator and the money. Now the platforms are the ones writing the check. An ad sales house with no exclusive to sell is a very different business. Lapsed isn't the same as lost, and we don't know why it lapsed. I'm not claiming a cause. What I'm saying is that the order of events is the order you'd expect if leverage was moving. Now the part that's mine. This is my inference, not a finding from the IAB report. If video deals like these keep growing, a baseline based on audio may capture less of the deal flow. May, not will. It's a question to watch in the next round of deals, not the last one. So does the history help? It does as an analogy and nothing more. In the 90s, radio consolidation taught everyone one lesson. Whoever controls the distribution takes the talent's leverage. The same lesson sits in cable bundling. The channel with the pipe sets the terms. And who has the pipe here? Whoever holds the exclusive window. Talent used to walk into a network with an audience and negotiate from that audience. A consolidated distributor changes the math because the audience has one address to find. I had a call this week from someone who sells for a network, and the first question was what they still own. Not what they sell, what they own. That's a brutal question, and it's the right one. If the platform holds the window and the creator holds the relationship, the network holds a rate card and a sales team. Useful, but not scarce. Leverage doesn't vanish. It moves. The network loses the package. The old pitch was give us the show and we'll bundle it with others and sell it at scale. If a buyer wants one exclusive window from one star, the bundle is the part nobody asks for. Are networks finished? No. Careful. One reported deal isn't a market, and I won't read a whole industry off a single contract. But the burden of proof flips. Networks used to be the default. Now they have to justify their cut. And talent, talent gains leverage in the room and may give some back afterward. Once the window sits with one platform, the next renewal conversation is with a buyer who knows exactly how much you depend on its address. And the advertiser? If the audience for new episodes sits behind one platform's wall, the advertiser shops from that platform's menu, and the network's rate card gets very quiet. So what does an executive do with that? If you run a network, write down what you own that a platform can't copy. The relationship, the data, the sales muscle. If you represent talent, treat the window as a trade and negotiate the renewal at signing, not when it arrives. If you buy media, find out where the inventory will live before you ask what it costs. I can't tell you how these particular contracts are built because the sources don't say, but those questions apply whatever the terms turn out to be. So when the next deal lands, ask who sells the ads, who owns the viewer relationship, and what the creator keeps when the window ends. Now what that costs in practice. Three checks, quickly. The window. What does exclusivity cost you in reach? Nobody on these deals has put that number on the table. The baseline. What does an audio yardstick leave out of a video deal? And the third is the one I haven't touched yet. Ad load. This is where the video dream gets bumpy.

Speaker 3A press release from October 9th on the podcast Study 2026 says fewer than one in ten listeners would accept more ads to keep shows free. Press release, so treat it as a claim. Nobody has verified it independently, but the direction matters. Video exclusives need payback, and the easy lever is more ads. Listeners are telling that survey they won't take them. Fewer than one in ten, which means the clear majority of that survey's respondents aren't signing up for it. Now run the unit economics. A deal reported at up to $100 million, leaning on a heavier ad load, sold to an audience that says it won't tolerate heavier ad load. I'd stress test that spreadsheet first. Here's the practical version. Ad load is the lever you pull when the math is short, and it's also the lever a listener can feel. A viewer who gets a clip free on one platform and the full episode behind another's wall has a new reason to walk away if the breaks pile up. I can't tell you where that tolerance line sits, and a press release headline doesn't either. What I can tell you is that it's a limit on the plan, and it belongs in the model before the deal is signed. There's a second pressure. Podnews headlines note that Amazon adds DVA Plus added brand suitability. Headline only. I haven't checked the details, so I won't pretend to know what it does. Still, it points one way. Buyers want control over where their ads land. Put a talent-led video show in that filter, and you've got a new question about what surrounds the spot. Not a verdict, just a line item for your list. So, price the window, question the baseline, and cap the ad load before the listeners cap it for you. That's the story. Time for the sign-off. Okay, two sentences since you've been patient. Follow the video window because that's where the money is moving, and check the baseline before you trust it, because a ruler built for audio may not measure a deal built around video. That's it. That's the whole episode, minus the jokes I'm very proud of. One more thing. If you only remember one question from today, make it this one. What is the buyer actually buying? Everything else is arithmetic after that. Now the ask. If this was useful, forward it to one colleague who needs to hear it. You know the one. They're still pricing everything off the audio number and calling it conservative. And if you've got tips, deal chatter, or feedback, send it to thedownload at heymato.com. Yes, I read it. My phone rings enough already, but email is quieter. Tell your colleague I said hi. Or don't. Just make sure they check the baseline before the next pitch deck lands on their desk. Until next week, friends, I'm Reid Mercer, and this was The Download.