US audio company SiriusXM, owner of Pandora music streaming, has bought podcast producer Stitcher from parent company EW Scripps for $265m upfront and an earnout payment of up to $60m.
The Verge reported: “The move sets Sirius to compete even more seriously against Spotify, iHeartMedia, and Apple for dominance of the podcasting space. Stitcher is not only a popular podcasting app with a premium, ad-free subscription service, but it’s also a network that, combined with its other entity Earwolf, produces shows like ‘Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend’. Scripps had also combined Stitcher with Midroll Media, a podcast ad company that sells ads for other shows like ‘The Dream and Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness’ that it acquired in 2015 for $50m.”
SiriusXM was formed by the 2008 merger of Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio. The company’s combined output is now claimed to reach over 150m listeners in the US.
