As one of the first NBA athlete-hosted podcasts, All the Smoke is a pioneer.
But until last year, it was locked into a deal with a fading company in Showtime Sports. After being purchased by Paramount Global, the legendary boxing and documentary brand folded, and ATS hosts Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson had to act fast.
They launched All the Smoke Productions and jumped ship when Showtime Sports went down. Soon after, they struck a partnership with DraftKings and Meadowlark Media, which allowed them to maintain and expand their platform in digital sports media.
In a new interview with Rich Kleiman of Kevin Durant’s Boardroom media outlet, Barnes revealed specifics of the deal for the first time.
“We signed a very beautiful, high seven-figure deal for a two-year situation to not only pay us for what we accomplished, but built up our company,” Barnes said.
That’s a far cry from the $30,000 in revenue that Barnes said he and Jackson pulled in for their first season of ATS, which included an interview with Kobe Bryant shortly before his tragic death.
Barnes shrewdly sold separate rights to the audio and video feeds of ATS heading into the second season of the show, then leveraged that into the DraftKings deal that will take ATS through 2025.
Details like this are hard to come by in media. The Kelces scored a $100 million deal with SiriusXM for New Heights this year for distribution and ad sales, but not everyone is so lucky.
ATS bringing in millions as a relatively small NBA-focused network is impressive. It also shows what’s possible for good sports content in 2024, even away from linear television and major networks.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.