The Pivot Podcast announces multi-year deal with Fanatics

The Pivot Podcast has come a long way since its January 2022 launch. The show, hosted by former NFL stars Ryan Clark, Channing Crowder, and Fred Taylor, had already posted 27 million cumulative YouTube views across 41 episodes by that June and boasted more than 333,000 subscribers at that point. Now, they’re up to more than 154 million cumulative views and 867,000 subscribers, and they continue to make waves with big interviews and moments. And they’ve now struck a multi-year sponsorship deal with Fanatics, which the sides announced Tuesday.

That’s an interesting sponsorship on a few levels. For one, while Fanatics is involved in a lot of aspects of sports, from apparel to collectibles to events to their own sportsbook (with the latter playing an important role in this sponsorship; it will be the official sportsbook of the podcast), they haven’t really been heavily involved in the content side to date. On the sportsbook side in particular, that’s a little unusual, with the likes of FanDuel, DraftKings, and Penn (now ESPN Bet) throwing big money at sponsorships and/or creating their own content. This is just one podcast sponsorship for now, but it could lead to more from them on the content front down the road.

Also, the sponsorship here is intended to be more than just signage and ad reads. The plan is to integrate elements of Fanatics’ various businesses into the main show organically. Some of that will include Fanatics ambassadors such as Tom Brady (who signed a long-term deal with the company for exclusive memorabilia back in 2020), who appeared in an exclusive Pivot interview around this announcement Tuesday.

With the numbers of team, league, and athlete partnerships Fanatics has, that could certainly see some notable moves on the content side. Other possible cross-pollinations include The Pivot filming from Fanatics’ events such as their Super Bowl party, Fanatics Fest NYC, trading card and collectible shows, and more. And, on the sportsbook side, the Pivot hosts will record extra betting content weekly.

For The Pivot and its hosts, this is just the latest step up. As noted above, they were already making waves even just months into this podcast, and landed big guests (including Clark’s ESPN colleague Stephen A. Smith and WBD’s Charles Barkley) early on. They’ve continued to grow in prominence since then. And now they have a big sponsorship to add to that.

[PivotPodcast.com]