Podcast Companies, Once Walking on Air, Feel the Strain of Gravity

When the celebrity-backed media company Religion of Sports — founded by Tom Brady, Michael Strahan and Gotham Chopra — debuted in 2018, getting into the rapidly expanding podcast business seemed like a no-brainer.

After producing a handful of film documentaries, it launched its first podcast, “Now for Tomorrow With Deepak Chopra,” hosted by Gotham’s father, in 2020. It hired more than a dozen audio producers and developed a broad slate of shows ranging from talk programs to scripted drama. (Six have been released, including “In the Moment With David Greene” and “False Idol.”)

But after a faltering advertising market and fears of a looming recession began battering the media and technology sectors in 2022, executives at Religion of Sports made an about-face. Early last month, the company’s podcast employees were informed that they had been laid off and that the audio division would shutter, according to two employees familiar with the decision who were granted anonymity because they feared violating a severance agreement. Ameeth Sankaran, its chief executive, didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.

The demise of Religion of Sports’s audio ambitions is the latest sign of frost settling over the once sizzling podcast industry. Spotify has spent more than $1 billion in recent years acquiring production companies and signing exclusive deals with celebrities like Joe Rogan and Kim Kardashian. But in January it reduced podcast staff for the third time in five months, and the company’s chief content officer, Dawn Ostroff, resigned.

“The dumb money era is over,” said Eric Nuzum, a podcast strategist and co-founder of the independent studio Magnificent Noise. “People had been throwing money at things just to see if they could get in and scale up audience quickly, but now everyone’s being a little bit more conservative.”