Last summer, the basketball podcast “Mind the Game” ended under unusual circumstances.
The dynamic between its co-hosts had been transformed: After their ninth episode, one host, JJ Redick, became head coach of the other host, LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers.
It was not clear whether “Mind the Game” would continue; Mr. Redick, a former player, confirmed his departure from years of podcasting by saying he was “excommunicated from the content space.”
But on Wednesday, after a nine-month hiatus, Mr. James will announce the return in April of the show — itself transformed. “Mind the Game” has not only a new co-host, the former player and coach Steve Nash, but a new distributor: the Amazon-owned podcast network Wondery.
The partnership is a departure from the show’s first batch of episodes, which were released directly to YouTube.
The three-year deal is also the latest attempt by Amazon to strengthen and distinguish its sports programming. In July, the company signed an 11-year streaming agreement with the National Basketball Association worth more than $1.8 billion annually.
A similar sequence unfolded in football when Wondery signed “New Heights,” the Jason and Travis Kelce podcast — the contract was worth a reported $100 million — after Amazon Prime Video acquired the rights to “Thursday Night Football.”
The deal also comes as more tech companies, like Netflix and Google, try to wrest dominance in sports programming from traditional television networks in a competitive scramble to keep their subscribers’ attention year-round.
Other podcasting networks, too, are investing in sports. Since December, SiriusXM has debuted “Casuals,” a sports comedy podcast, and become partners with “The Fantasy Footballers”; Vox Media has added “Served With Andy Roddick” to its network; and iHeartMedia announced eight new podcasts on a women’s sports network, including one show with the retired soccer champion Ashlyn Harris. (Even Democrats, seeking to regain media ground, have flocked to sports podcasts.)
“Sports is a category that monetizes really, really well,” easily drawing advertisers, said Jen Sargent, chief executive of Wondery. And as sports remains a “priority” for Amazon, more of these deals will be a “big focus” of Wondery’s year ahead, she said: “We have an opportunity to create a home for the best sports voices out there. And podcasting is often the way in to doing that.”
Like most other podcasting networks, Wondery is leaning into video podcasting, primarily on YouTube. But unlike other networks, Wondery plans to bring its video podcasts to Prime Video, with its 200 million monthly customers, and Amazon’s household streaming devices.
Wondery has also begun developing consumer goods based on its podcasts, which can be sold directly on Amazon and beyond. (“Wow in the World,” a children’s science podcast, debuted its educational toy line last year.)
It is a savvy offering in an ecosystem where MrBeast, with his 377 million subscribers on YouTube, now earns more income from his chocolate brand than from his channel. Mr. James already has a line of grooming products based on “The Shop,” a separate YouTube interview show originally hosted by Mr. James and his business partner Maverick Carter in barbershops. (“Mind the Game” is produced by their joint media brand, Uninterrupted.)
As with “The Shop,” and “The Decision,” a 2010 television special announcing his dramatic move from Cleveland to Miami, Mr. James sees “Mind the Game” as a way to speak directly to fans — and circumvent mainstream sports media. The show leans more into technical analysis than loudest-in-the-room banter about basketball.
“It’s not more complicated than doing things I want to watch,” Mr. James said in a statement to The New York Times before his Wednesday appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show,” where he planned to discuss the podcast’s return. “‘Mind the Game’ is straight up for the fans, especially when a lot of the shows are less interested in the game itself.”
Mr. Nash, Mr. James’s new co-host, has kept a relatively low profile since coaching the Brooklyn Nets from 2020 to 2022. He lives in Phoenix, where he played for most of his career.
“I am self-aware that everyone has a podcast,” Mr. Nash said in a phone interview this week. “I recognize there’s a skill and talent to doing a podcast that I don’t take lightly.”
But after spending years of his athletic career “trying to perfect this thing that’s not perfectible,” he said, “ I think there’s a lot of space there to share and to offer insights.”
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