Influencer Agency M&A: In recent weeks, an uncanny number of social and influencer marketing agencies have been acquired, with the latest such tie-up coming on Wednesday, courtesy of Billion Dollar Boy purchasing Creator Authority in a “multimillion-dollar” deal, per Business Insider. This deal comes just days after Saylor merged with Mutiny and SAMY bought Get Engaged. According to James Creech, the founder of creator M&A advisory Quartermast, there have been 26 agency acquisitions year to date, nine of which are creator marketing agencies. The BDB deal marked the 109th creator economy M&A deal this year, compared to 91 all of last year. The deals reflect the continued maturation of the space, as well as incumbents’ realization that they need creator capabilities, but the brief takeaway is: start a creator agency.
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Chris Balfe is the founder and CEO of Red Seat Ventures, a podcast company acquired by Fox last year that monetizes some of the biggest podcasts on the planet, including Ashley Flowers’ Crime Junkie. Balfe cofounded the company alongside his brother, Kevin Balfe, in 2015, and named it after the single red seat in Fenway Park that marks the farthest home run ever hit in the stadium—502 feet, by Ted Wiliams.
I met Balfe at the Red Seat offices in Flatiron on Wednesday to discuss the company and the rapidly shifting state of the podcasting industry, which was a subject of several conversations I had last week during Advertising Week. We talked about competing with SiriusXM, Amazon, and Netflix for the biggest shows in the ecosystem, why no streamer has become a real home for video podcasts yet, and why he thinks short-form platforms pay creators far less than they should.
This interview has been edited.
Mark Stenberg: You sold to Fox early last year. How has being part of Fox changed what Red Seat is trying to build?
Chris Balfe: It happened fast. I got a Twitter DM from Paul Cheesbrough, we did a Zoom, he came to New York, and within about six weeks we had sold the company. It was a real shotgun marriage. What changes is your sense of how big and how fast you can go.
Mark: Who are you actually competing against for top-tier shows?
Chris: We love the long tail of podcasting, but that’s not where we play. When you ask who’s going after the Giggly Squads of the world, it’s Netflix, Amazon, SiriusXM, and us. Netflix’s pitch is exclusivity, Amazon will maybe do one deal a year—they want to be in the Kelce and Oprah business—and Sirius has a long legacy in audio. We’re much more video-focused.
Mark: What streamer, excluding YouTube, is winning the battle for podcast talent?
Chris: None of them yet. For most podcast creators, the money comes from three places: Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. I’d be excited about a streamer becoming the fourth leg of the stool, but they need to deliver audiences consistently.
Mark: You called short-form video a monetization gap for creators. What do you mean?
Chris: We get a lot of monetization value from Apple and YouTube, but comparatively little from Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube Shorts. The U.S. short-form video market was over $100 billion last year, and it was built off the backs of creators who are not paid anywhere near what they should be. I’m not naive enough to think I’ll change their pay rates. So we need to sell it better. Influencer budgets are a separate pool from podcast dollars, and we need to tap into that money for our creators.
