Skip to content

How To Value A Podcast

If Joe Rogan of The Joe Rogan Experience, one of the top 20 podcasters, wanted to one day scale up by bringing on additional producers and podcast personalities to host multiple new shows, how much equity should he give away to investors for their investment? Or perhaps Dan Carlin wanted to turn his Hardcore History podcast into a company that published history textbooks. How much should he value his podcast if he decided to propose this business plan to venture capitalists? Basically the question is, how much is a podcast worth? How do you value a podcast and is it considered a company with a robust enough business model to value it?

While listening to the episode of Startup (the first show produced by Gimlet Media) on valuing their startup company at $10 million during their seed funding, I was curious to find out if podcasts could in fact be valued the same way as ordinary businesses. An investor might need to know the valuation of a potential podcast company. Or a podcast producer might need to know the value of their podcast if they’re looking for funding, exit, or if they want to see how their podcast stacks up against others. Or a prospective podcaster might want to know if it’s worth venturing into the world of podcasting.



In order to answer the question of how much a podcast is worth, I looked at three podcasts that provide enough financial data to work with. First, Gimlet Media, whose show, Startup, discussed some of their numbers and their valuation on their show and in the media. The other two podcasts I used are Smart Passive Income (SPI) and Entrepreneurs on Fire (EOFire) as they have consistently produced monthly income reports since the inception of their respective shows.

The Data

  • At the end of 2015, Gimlet raised $6 million at a $30 million valuation. They forecasted $7 million revenue for 2016.
  • EOFire generated an average of $3 million annual revenue in the last 3 years with an average of ~72% net profit margin. I then used the discounted cash flow method and forecasted a normalized level of revenue and profit similar to historical average levels with slow growth. I assumed a 35% corporate tax rate and a 10% discount rate*.
  • SPI generated an average of $1.4 million annual revenue in the last 3 years with an average of ~74% net profit margin. I also used the discounted cash flow method here and forecasted a normalized level of revenue and profit similar to historical average levels with slow growth. I assumed a 35% corporate tax rate and a 10% discount rate*.

*Discount rate of 10% was derived using the industry standard discount rate for Advertising, Broadcasting and Entertainment as podcasting is not an established enough industry to garner a discount rate yet. Advertising has an industry discount rate of 6.6%, Broadcasting has an industry discount rate of 6.2% and entertainment has 7.9% (Source: Damodoran). An average of 7% discount rate + a company-specific risk factor of 300 bps was added as long-term success of a profitable podcasting company is too early to tell.

The Valuation

The average implied revenue multiple that I got from the valuation was 5.0x.

What does this mean? The multiples are certainly a lot higher than revenue multiples of cash flowing companies in general. The average industry revenue multiple for Advertising is 1.7x, Broadcasting is 2.9x, and Entertainment is 2.9x (Source: Damodoran). I suppose since podcasting is a whole new vertical compared to these traditional industries, it could be comparable to startups. Looking at startup valuations then, the revenue multiples range anywhere from <1.0x to 10.0x. In particular, digital media companies are valued between 1.1x and 5.9x (Source: Fortune).

Could 5.0x become the industry standard valuation multiple for podcasting (for the time being)?



How do Podcasts Make Money?

The value of a podcast depends on the types of income streams the podcast employs and the stability of revenue generated by each income stream. Advertising/sponsorship is the income stream that most podcasts rely on, but selling products and services catered to a niche audience is where a podcast makes the big bucks.

The possibility of coming up with a new income stream is endless. Some income streams require more creativity and don’t necessarily depend on the number of downloads (assuming they have a pretty legitimate level of audience already). And then there are other income streams where once you implement, you don’t need to keep innovating and are more predictable cash flows for the. The most common income streams and their characteristics are:

Income Stream Description Avg  Revenue Predictability Depends on Download #s Creativity
Sponsorship/

Advertisement

Pre-roll: ~15 seconds at the beginning of the episode

Mid-roll: ~30 – 60 seconds in the middle of the episode

~$20-$40 CPM (Cost per Mille); i.e. fee per 1000 impressions (or downloads) High High Low
Affiliate Income Clickable link on the website that directs to a 3rd party’s website with products and services to purchase Wide range, e.g. $0.25 – $50 per purchase of 3rd party product using the affiliate referral link Low Mid Low
Membership Special privileges beyond free podcast listening ~$5-10/month High Low High
Products & Services Introduce new products (physical or digital) or services (webinars, online courses, in-person courses) catered to the audience Varies depending on product/service

e.g. eBook could be $10 to purchase or an in-person course could be $1000 to attend

Low Low High

Download #s isn’t Everything

The good news is that you can rake in millions of dollars if you have close to or more than a million downloads per month. The bad news is that you have to get to a point where you’re drawing in close to or more than a million downloads per month. But, I won’t leave you with a bad taste. Here’s another good news: it’s that the number of downloads isn’t everything when it comes to generating revenue.

For instance, EOFire’s Revenue/Download was $3.53/download with ~850k downloads in the beginning of 2015. Put another way, every download was worth $3.53. Comparably, Gimlet had almost ten times the download numbers in a given month but was only able to sell $1 per download. Breaking out the income streams makes it clear that EOFire’s profitable success per download is because ~60% of their revenue is generated from additional products and services.  SPI’s revenue per download is pretty healthy as well with $2.33, with ~20% of their income coming from products & services. Gimlet on the other hand isn’t leveraging their audience enough.



Of course, it’s a different story because Gimlet’s network of podcast shows is more journalistic and story-telling vs SPI and EOFire, which are geared towards a niche audience of entrepreneurs. But I still think there is a lot of opportunity there for Gimlet to introduce products and services to their audience (i.e. not just to their “customers,” that is, advertisers/sponsors, selling production/editorial services).

Podcasters: How much are you generating in revenue per download? What income streams have you employed and what new income streams can you add in order to scale up?

23 thoughts on “How To Value A Podcast”

  1. Very interesting article and well written! I’ve often wondered how to value EOFire, and this is the best data I’ve seen to date 🙂

    1. microcap.co

      Thank you kindly, JLD!

    2. Ralph Russell

      Thanks for sharing JLD!

  2. Alex

    This is a great article thank you it is great info as I’m launching my podcast in march

    1. microcap.co

      Thanks Alex! Best of luck with your podcast!

  3. Jason

    As a person fond of numbers, this was very enlightening. Looking forward to more of your posts.

    1. microcap.co

      Thanks Jason! I’ll be sure to produce more quality content!

  4. In descending order of magnitude, our revenues come from:
    Products especially the Culture Shift Learning Academy
    One-on-one coaching
    Affiliate programs for other people’s products
    Consulting
    Membership Mastermind Group

    Notice that sponsorship is not on the list. We’ve been holding off on taking sponsors in order to give a better listener experience. We’ve had a couple of recent conversations with potential sponsors, and that might change. For now, the products & services are a better bet for revenue.

    1. microcap.co

      Thank you for sharing that valuable insight, Tony. Products comes out on top again. What does your revenue per download look like?

  5. The two additional values that are not mentioned is getting clients from your podcast or getting hired from being a guest on a podcast.

    1) When you host a podcast, you become desirable as a guest. Here is example of the host hiring me after being a guest on how to help him craft his pitch http://tonygshow.com/episode-061-john-livesay-crafting-your-elevator-pitch-with-the-pitch-whisperer/

    2) Stephen Woessner at Predictive ROI produces podcasts for small businesses as a tool to get a relationship with your guests. His new book Podcasting For Profit comes out in August http://predictiveroi.com/podcasts/

    1. microcap.co

      Good points, John. I will include these into the updated view next quarter. Much appreciate your feedback!

  6. Pingback: Best entrepreneur podcasts | business podcasts | microcap.co

  7. Interesting Article. The multiple of 5X is probably right but I don’t understand how you valued Gimlet with a 4.3 multiple of NEGATIVE 3 million? Wouldn’t that make it worth NEGATIVE 12.9 million?

    1. microcap.co

      Hi Pat,

      The 4.3x multiple is the revenue multiple, so that uses the revenue to calculate. We wouldn’t have an EBITDA multiple here since the EBITDA is negative. Thanks for your question!

  8. I’ve been building acquisition for growth plans and operating in podcast M&A for brands/networks for just under 2 years. Bought my first podcast this year (relaunch in December).

    We’re pushing PodcastScore.com into beta based off the deals and data we’ve seen – would love your feedback! I believe it is truly the first of it’s kind. At a minimum, the only podcast valuation model I know of with actual usage.

    We generally see podcast multiples range from 3-6x, but the rarity of large shows and closeness of the audience/host relationship make each show unique at this point

    1. microcap.co

      Really interesting stuff, Michael. If you want to write a guest post on how to buy/sell a podcast for my readers (and promote your site that way), then please let me know! I’m planning to do a series of articles to feature entrepreneurs who want to help others start a business and promote their business. Thanks for taking the time to write a comment.

  9. We recently sold our podcast for six figures+ and had less than 300 downloads per episode at the time of sale. Many different factors go into valuing a show… as you aptly pointed out. Great article.

    1. microcap.co

      What an amazing accomplishment – congratulations to you, Steve! If you’re interested in sharing and adding insight on this topic, I would love to feature your story, as I’m sure it would help a lot of people and I would be excited to hear more of your story. Thank you for your comment!

        1. microcap.co

          Hi Jennifer, I will email you about your nonprofit!

  10. @microcap.co, I would love to discuss something with you regarding this story! Your “contact” suggested I comment rather than email you. 🙂

    1. microcap.co

      Hi Jennifer, thanks for your comment! Yes, this is a faster way to contact me, and now that I have your contact, I’ll email you about your nonprofit!

Leave a Reply to microcap.co Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.