A few years back Brian Verne, CEO of Wave Sports & Entertainment—a production and distribution company launched in 2017—made a bet: As more young fans watched sports on phones rather than TV, there’d be a market for original video and audio shows featuring athletes themselves. Wave’s roster of podcast hits have proved Verne right, revealing a huge demand for sports influencers. Shows like New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce—Amazon’s podcast studio, Wondery, inked the football brothers to a $100 million deal last year; Not Gonna Lie with Kylie Kelce, which debuted at the top of the podcast charts last December; and House of Maher, featuring American Olympic rugby sensation Ilona Maher and her sisters have helped Wave’s original shows generate around 5 billion impressions over the last year. The company will continue, Verne says, “to provide the infrastructure and a toolkit for talent to build their business and brand on digital and social.” It plays a similar role for sports organizations like the WNBA and the Tennis Channel through an in-house media agency launched last year.
