by Gavin Gaddis
In a new Sounds Profitable thought leadership piece, Sport Social Podcast Network argues that the sound of the 2026 FIFA World Cup is just as likely to come from a podcast as from a sports broadcaster.In the four years since the previous World Cup, sports podcasting has grown into more than a complementary format; it is now “a defining part of how fans experience major sporting events.” For example: according to a new release from BBC Studios and NumberEight, a major U.S. hospitality brand saw a 19% overall awareness lift from a World Cup travel podcast campaign developed with BBC Studios, NumberEight, Barometer, and Veritonic.
CoHost and Quill Founder and CEO Fatima Zaidi launches a new project by asking ten founders one question. In this first edition, she asks, “If you could go back to year one of your company, what is something you’d do differently?” In addition to comments from founders like Oxford Road’s Dan Granger and Sounds Profitable Partner Bryan Barletta, Zaidi also weighs in with her own lesson: build processes before you think you need them.
Tubefilter talks about the current Barbenheimer-esque phenomenon that is the overnight success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms and the unexpected multi-week growth of Curry Barker’s Obsession. The former comes from a 20-year-old YouTube animator, and the latter found viral YouTube fame with an hour-long found-footage movie made on an $800 budget. While not all YouTubers can successfully make the jump to a new format, as Shelby Oaks’ underperformance shows, those who do are breaking records. Mark Fischbach’s Iron Lung released in hundreds of theaters without a distributor purely off the back of Fischbach leveraging his YouTube fanbase to request screenings. Content creators haven’t just proven they can produce content effectively at a low cost; they also have close connections with their audiences that they can leverage to great effect.
Nielsen’s quarterly overview of how U.S. consumers are spending their listening day is now out for Q1 2026. U.S. audio consumers are spending almost four hours per day with audio. 82% of all daily ad-supported audio time goes to radio and podcasts, with streaming music getting 16%. Edison Research’s Share of Ear for Q1 reports podcasts make up 30% of daily time spent with ad-supported audio for adults aged 18 to 34.
…as for the rest of the news:
Two commercial audio bodies —the U.K.’s Radiocentre and Australia’s Commercial Radio & Audio — are headed to Cannes this year to share insight proving audio’s capabilities with increasing advertising impact.
StreamGuys is introducing a new AI ad tagging service that automates identifying and placing ad markers within podcast episodes and archived content.
Yesterday’s episode of The Global Podscape features Podway CEO Alejo Vargas discussing key takeaways from The Podcast Show London, why Latin America needs a stronger voice in global podcasting, and the current state of podcasting Colombia.
Ad Results Media has a new blog on the power for forecasting audio performance instead of reacting to campaign performance after the fact.
Bethany Clevenstine Shocki is now SVP, Sales Growth at PRX (congrats!).
The New York Times has a review of the new book Sublimation, written by Multitude podcast Wow If True host Isabel J. Kim.
