In case you’ve been living under a rock, video podcasts are everywhere now. Tubi just linked up with SiriusXM. Netflix is paying up for Barstool and cutting deals with Spotify, and iHeart. Spotify is building studios in Hollywood. YouTube already owns the habit. Everyone is chasing the same thing: cheap addiction.
Streaming’s old flex was spending more than everyone else. The new flex is getting viewers to come back every week for a fraction of the cost.
YouTube Built the Addiction Machine, and Everyone Else Wants the Pipe
Ampere’s latest category read showed that 20% of global internet users had watched a video podcast on a social video service in the prior month, with YouTube alone reaching 11%. That’s mass behavior, not a side hustle.
Then YouTube moved that behavior onto the biggest screen in the house. Viewers watched more than 700 million hours of podcasts on living room devices in October 2025, up from 400 million hours a year earlier.
YouTube turned people talking into TV time.
Video podcasts reward duration, frequency, creator output, and algorithmic discovery. YouTube’s product is built for all four. A creator records, uploads, clips, gets surfaced, gets monetized, and comes back next week. The machine doesn’t need a greenlight meeting.
That’s what Netflix, Tubi, Spotify, and SiriusXM are all chasing. They don’t need every viewer to stare at the screen for two straight hours. They just need enough people to keep the episode running, return weekly, and generate sellable attention.
Tubi Found the FAST Cheat Code: Rent the Fanbase, Sell the Ads, Skip the Risk
Tubi’s SiriusXM deal brings video podcasts, including Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, Rotten Mango, The School of Greatness, What Now? with Trevor Noah, Moral of the Story, and The Deep 3 Podcast to Tubi. The pact is non-exclusive, and Tubi and SiriusXM Media will share ad sales.
That’s a perfect deal for Tubi.
Tubi gets recognizable talent without buying the talent. It gets premium-ish video inventory without having to build a studio system. It gets repeatable viewing without betting on a hit show. SiriusXM gets another screen, another ad surface, and another way to make more money from the same host relationships.
It’s FAST arbitrage, really.
Tubi doesn’t need video podcasts to become Stranger Things. It needs them to be cheap, familiar, and monetizable. For a free streaming service, the ideal content unit already has fans, produces new episodes regularly, and gives advertisers a clean place to spend.
SiriusXM brings the voices. Tubi brings the screen. The ad team brings the invoice.
Netflix Is Paying Barstool Because Habit Is Cheaper Than Hits
Netflix’s podcast push is a direct counterattack against YouTube.
Netflix’s Spotify deal brings video versions of The Bill Simmons Podcast, The Rewatchables, Dissect, Conspiracy Theories, and other Spotify Studios and Ringer shows to Netflix in early 2026.
The iHeartMedia deal adds more than 15 video podcasts, including My Favorite Murder, The Breakfast Club, Bobby Bones Presents: The Bobbycast, Behind the Bastards, The Psychology of Your 20s, Dear Chelsea, and This Is Important.
Netflix has already pushed the iHeart relationship past podcast licensing. Since June 1, The Breakfast Club has streamed live on Netflix every weekday, giving the service its first daily live program and a nearly three-hour block of recurring morning habit.
Daily live programming creates a different kind of Netflix habit. The Breakfast Club brings a weekday ritual, a trained audience, and nearly three hours of recurring inventory. Morning radio did the hard part. Netflix wants the screen time.
Then came Barstool. Netflix’s multiyear deal brings Pardon My Take, The Ryen Russillo Podcast, and Spittin’ Chiclets to Netflix as exclusive video podcasts in 2026. Front Office Sports reported the deal is worth 8 figures per year.
That check only makes sense if Netflix believes podcasts do more than pad the library. They create daily and weekly habit, sports adjacency, social clip gravity, ad-tier inventory, and community language that already exists before the first episode hits the app.
A scripted miss burns cash and disappears. A hit podcast shows up with trust already attached.
Sports podcasts are especially valuable because they attach to the calendar. NFL Monday. NBA trades. Stanley Cup playoffs. Gambling lines. Fantasy panic. Internet beef. Repeat.
Netflix needs more of it. Its ad tier needs impressions. Its home screen needs reasons to open the app between tentpole drops. Its broader fight with YouTube needs formats that feel alive every day.
Barstool gives Netflix something most originals don’t: an audience that already knows when the show posts.
And The Breakfast Club gives it something even rarer: a weekday ritual.
Spotify Is Building the Factory Before Netflix Buys the Workers
Spotify’s move is upstream.
Spotify opened Sycamore Studios in Hollywood in January 2026, a video-first podcast facility built for creators, production support, and higher-end video output. The nearly 11,000-square-foot site includes five studio areas, and The Ringer will use it as a home base.
Spotify needs to make the video podcast supply chain easier for creators. Better sets, cleaner clips, stronger production workflows, more ad formats, and improved creator economics all make Spotify more useful before a show ever reaches Netflix, YouTube, or Tubi.
Netflix can buy finished shows. Tubi can rent distribution. YouTube can let the machine run. Spotify has to make creators better at video before someone else owns the relationship.
That’s why the studio matters. It gives Spotify a reason to be infrastructure, not just an app.
Everyone is playing a different position. Netflix is buying distribution. Tubi is buying cheap CTV hours. Spotify is building supply. SiriusXM is extending monetization. YouTube already owns the behavior.
The Ad Business Is the Addiction Business
Video podcasts combine three things buyers like: trust, time, and targeting.
Host relationships create intimacy. Long episodes create inventory. CTV creates a bigger-screen ad product. Clips create social exhaust. Audio keeps the IP alive in cars, gyms, kitchens, and commutes.
That’s why the format punches above its production weight.
Edison Research, which tracks podcast listening and viewing, added Netflix and Tubi to its Podcast Metrics service in Q1 2026. Among U.S. weekly podcast consumers age 13 and older, 14% had used Netflix to consume podcasts, while 4% had used Tubi. YouTube and Spotify were still way ahead, at 64% and 42%, respectively.
That gap is the opportunity.
Netflix doesn’t need to catch YouTube tomorrow. Tubi doesn’t need to become the default podcast destination. They just need to pull enough weekly hours into their own ad systems to improve engagement economics.
The old streaming model was “spend more, launch bigger, pray harder.”
Video podcasts ask a better question: what if the better business is a couch, three microphones, and a host people trust?
The Risk Is That Netflix Turns Podcasts Into Television and Kills the Magic
Here’s where the whole thing can go sideways.
The magic of podcasting is the host relationship. Fans aren’t showing up for a distributor. They’re showing up for the person on the mic.
Tubi’s non-exclusive approach respects that. It adds another window without forcing fans to change behavior. If a SiriusXM show still lives on YouTube, audio apps, and Tubi, the audience decides where to watch. The creator gets more surface area. The distributor gets incremental ad revenue.
Netflix’s model is more dangerous and potentially more valuable. Exclusivity gives Netflix a reason to promote the shows and gives consumers a reason to open Netflix. But it also asks creators to trade open discovery for guaranteed money and premium positioning.
That check better clear.
YouTube has search, comments, recommendations, archives, clips, creator pages, Shorts, and algorithmic resurfacing. Netflix has scale, cash, and premium positioning. Those are huge advantages, but they don’t automatically recreate podcast culture.
The wrong move is making podcasts look like cheap late night. The right one’s making streaming services feel less dead between launches.
The Streaming Wars Take
Video podcasts create more hours, more often, for less money.
Scripted TV is expensive. Sports rights are inflationary. Subscriber growth is harder. Ad tiers need more inventory. Consumers are spending more time with creators than Hollywood wants to admit.
Tubi’s SiriusXM deal is low-risk addiction. Rent the audience. Share the ads. Keep the cost base light.
Netflix’s Barstool, Spotify, and iHeart moves are more aggressive because Netflix is trying to buy habit before YouTube makes it too expensive to chase.
Spotify’s Hollywood studio play shows the other side of the trade. The creator supply chain is professionalizing, and the companies that help creators make better video will have more leverage over where that video goes.
Video podcasts are retention infrastructure.
They won’t replace scripted hits. They won’t replace live sports. They’ll do something quieter and more financially useful. They’ll siphon recurring weekly hours at a fraction of the cost.
In streaming, the most valuable hour isn’t always the biggest hour. It’s the one viewers come back for without being sold.
The Streaming Wars is intentionally ad-free
We don’t run display ads. Not because we can’t, but because we don’t believe in them.
They interrupt the reading experience. They cheapen the work. And they burn advertisers’ money on impressions nobody actually wants.
So we chose a different model.
We say the things people in this industry are already thinking but don’t say out loud. We connect the dots beyond the headline and focus on explaining why things matter to the people working in this business.
If you believe industry coverage can exist without clutter and interruption, you can support it here → SUPPORT TSW.
Support is optional. But it directly funds research and continued coverage — and helps prove this model can work.
Support TSW →
