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Front & Center: Marc Horine on ESPN’s podcasting business

ESPN's Bill Simmons interviewed President Barack Obama

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Marc Horine

ESPN first got into the business of podcasting in 2007, but last week signaled a high water mark for the podcasting division of ESPN’s digital group.

President Barack Obama joined Bill Simmons for a special edition of The BS Report. Within a few days of posting, it became one of the Top 10 most downloaded podcasts in ESPN history and widespread praise came from all corners of social media.

This week, Simmons again has a podcasting coup of sorts with a full episode of The B.S. Report being brought to the TV screen for the first time with The B.S. Report Special: Magic Johnson. This special edition of the podcast will air on Sunday, March 11 at 10:30 p.m. ET, immediately following the 9:00 p.m. premiere of The Announcement, an ESPN Films and NBA Entertainment production.

With all this podcasting promulgating going on, we wanted to learn a bit more about the business. We discovered that in 2011, ESPN generated 358 million podcast downloads (up 129 percent from 2010) and that ESPN publishes more than 100 podcasts daily. To discover more we talked to Marc Horine, ESPN’s Vice President for Digital Partnerships & Sales Development for another Front & Center podcast.

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