August 2024: Wondery paid more than $100 million for three years of exclusive New Heights distribution. Largest sports talent podcast deal in history. Two brothers, one banter format, a Taylor Swift halo — and a structural lesson in why athlete-as-media is the next sports-PR playbook.
New Heights is the most consequential sports podcast deal of the modern creator-economy era.
Travis and Jason Kelce launched New Heights in August 2022 under Wave Sports + Entertainment. The format was simple: two NFL brothers, weekly banter, game breakdowns, guest interviews, light pop-culture crossover. Within a year it was a top-five sports podcast in the United States. By the 2023 NFL season — coinciding with Travis Kelce's relationship with Taylor Swift becoming a global story — New Heights was routinely the #1 podcast in America, sports or otherwise.
In August 2024, Amazon-owned Wondery signed an exclusive three-year distribution and content deal worth more than $100 million. That is the largest podcast deal ever signed by athlete-talent. It rewrites the sports-creator-economy comp set the way Joe Rogan's 2020 Spotify deal rewrote the talk-podcast comp set.
Snapshot
| Operators | Travis Kelce (TE, Kansas City Chiefs) & Jason Kelce (retired C, Philadelphia Eagles) |
| Property | New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce |
| Launched | August 2022 — Wave Sports + Entertainment |
| Wondery deal | August 2024 — $100M+ over three years, exclusive distribution, content extensions |
| Rank | Top-3 U.S. podcast across all categories during NFL season; #1 sports podcast across multiple weeks 2023-2024 |
| Format | Weekly brother banter, NFL breakdown, guest interviews, pop-culture crossover |
| Sponsorship anchors | Bud Light, Buffalo Wild Wings, DraftKings, Experian, others |
The structural story
The athlete-podcast category was Pat McAfee territory until New Heights — and McAfee's model is solo plus production team. The Kelce template is different: two athletes with overlapping but distinct platforms, brotherly chemistry as the format moat, and zero requirement for outside guest pulls in the weeks where the brothers themselves carry the show.
Three structural moats stacked.
The first is the chemistry. New Heights cannot be replicated by hiring two unrelated NFL veterans — the brotherly dynamic is the product. The same logic applies to other family-podcast successes (The Sklar Brothers, the Manning brothers' adjacent broadcast property). Family chemistry is non-duplicable IP.
The second is the in-season relevance. NFL podcasts have a 17-week window of maximum salience. Travis is active, which means New Heights is live-reporting from inside a Super Bowl-contending locker room every week. Jason brings the recently-retired veteran-analyst lens. The two-week game window between Sunday game and next-week recap is the highest-engagement audio slot in U.S. sports media. New Heights owns it.
The third is the Taylor Swift crossover. Travis's relationship with Taylor Swift, public since fall 2023, dragged the show outside the sports demographic into mainstream pop culture. The audience expansion from sports-male into the Swift demographic added millions of new listeners — and the Swift effect did not reverse when New Heights' core sports content continued. That is rare in audience expansion: most cross-over audiences churn back to their original surface.
Why the Wondery deal matters
The $100M+ Wondery deal does three things at once.
It re-prices athlete-podcast IP. Before New Heights, the comp set was Pat McAfee's reported nine-figure ESPN deal and the Manning brothers' adjacent broadcast property. The Wondery deal establishes that pure podcast IP — without a broadcast television tie-in — can clear nine figures on athlete chemistry alone.
It positions Amazon as the dominant sports-podcast distribution buyer. Spotify owns Rogan and Bill Simmons. Wondery (Amazon) now owns New Heights. The two-platform duopoly for prestige podcast IP is set.
It demonstrates the family-IP moat. Future athlete-podcast deals will be benchmarked against the Kelce chemistry. Solo athletes will struggle to clear comparable valuations. The Kelce template raises the bar for athletes considering a media play — solo path is harder, family path is easier if the chemistry exists.
What this means for sports communications
The athlete-as-media-operator playbook has now been validated at multiple scale points. Pat McAfee built the solo-operator template. The Kelces built the family-IP template. The next generation of NFL, NBA, and MLB stars approaching retirement will run the math both ways — solo media business, or family/friend media business with built-in chemistry.
For brand marketers, the implication is structural: athlete sponsorship spend is increasingly competing not just with broadcast media buys but with athlete-owned podcast inventory. Bud Light, Buffalo Wild Wings, DraftKings, and Experian inside New Heights reach the same NFL demographic at lower CPMs than Sunday broadcast windows — with better contextual fit. The trade-off is dependence on the athletes' continued willingness to produce content.
The risks
Two known weaknesses.
Travis Kelce is still an active NFL player. Career-ending injury or sudden retirement would reshape the property — Jason continues, but the in-locker-room reporting edge disappears. The Wondery deal is presumably structured to handle this contingency, but the audience composition would shift.
The second is the Swift effect dependency. The pop-culture audience expansion is real but tied to a relationship. The audience may or may not retain its full expansion if the relationship structure changes. New Heights would remain a top-five sports podcast — that floor is durable — but the top-of-all-categories peak is partly Swift-derivative.
Related EPR coverage:
How Did the Kelce Brothers Build New Heights into a $100M Property?
The Kelce brothers combined three non-replicable advantages: authentic family chemistry, in-season NFL relevance, and cross-demographic reach. Unlike solo athlete podcasts that depend on guest booking or production scale, New Heights functions as a self-contained content engine. The brothers' on-field credibility—Travis as an active Super Bowl champion tight end, Jason as a recently retired All-Pro center—gives them insider access and real-time reporting authority that external analysts cannot match. The weekly cadence aligns perfectly with the NFL news cycle, capturing the highest-engagement window in U.S. sports media.
The Taylor Swift crossover accelerated growth but did not create the foundation. New Heights was already a top-five sports podcast before fall 2023. The Swift effect expanded the audience beyond the core sports-male demographic into mainstream pop culture, adding millions of listeners who stayed for the content even as the celebrity news cycle moved on. That retention is the key metric: most celebrity-driven audience spikes reverse within weeks. New Heights held its expanded base, proving the underlying content quality could serve multiple audience segments simultaneously.
The $100M+ Wondery deal establishes a new valuation ceiling for athlete-owned podcast IP and validates the athlete-as-media-operator model at institutional scale. Before New Heights, the comparable benchmarks were Pat McAfee's reported nine-figure ESPN deal (which included broadcast television components) and the Manning brothers' broadcast property. The Kelce deal proves that pure podcast distribution rights—without TV tie-ins—can command nine-figure valuations when the chemistry and audience are durable.
For the next generation of retiring athletes, the strategic calculus has shifted. Solo media ventures face higher production costs and guest-dependency risk. Family or partnership-based formats offer built-in chemistry, lower churn, and stronger advertiser appeal. Brand marketers now treat athlete-owned podcast inventory as a direct substitute for traditional broadcast buys: same NFL demographic, lower CPMs, better contextual alignment. The trade-off is structural dependence on the athletes' willingness to produce content week after week—a risk that broadcast deals do not carry.
