Can White-Hot Podcaster Alex Cooper Ride an Olympics Gig to a $100 Million Audio Deal?
You may have noticed Alexandra Cooper a lot this week. The wildly popular podcaster has been on the Today show, Seth Myers’ late night show and was decked out in a series of designer outfits for a magazine piece in The Wall Street Journal — all just this week.
At 29, the host of the “Call Her Daddy” podcast on Spotify — the third-biggest broadcaster on the platform, with 3.7 million followers, behind Joe Rogan (14.5 million) and Ted Talks Daily (5 million) — is on the precipice of a big media moment. As the host of an online interview show for NBC during the Olympics, she will be talking to star athletes from Paris — and broadening her audience to NBC platforms and the sports world.
The timing is no coincidence, as she and her business team are aiming to close an extraordinary $100 million podcasting deal. Her three-year deal at Spotify, signed in 2021 for a whopping $60 million, ends in December.
Industry insiders told TheWrap that both Spotify and SiriusXM — the home of Howard Stern, Megyn Kelly and Kevin Hart — are negotiating to sign Cooper as their star, which would make her the highest-earning woman in the podcasting space.
But the aspiration comes as podcasters like Spotify are cutting costs to generate more profitability after overspending on talent and infrastructure on podcasting, in the hopes of creating a revenue windfall from the audio sector.
Last year Spotify had two massive layoffs — cutting 6% and then 17% of the company’s workforce — including Chief Content Officer Dawn Ostroff, a Hollywood veteran who was hired to develop Spotify’s podcasting business. Spotify spent more than $1 billion on podcast expansion starting in 2019. But as the stock has climbed back to $300 per share, from $150 a year ago, and the platform has shown strong user growth, it’s not clear if Spotify is ready to go back to its free spending ways.
Still, mega-podcast deals aren’t going away. Just Thursday, Dax Shepard announced an $80 million deal with Amazon’s Wondery podcast network for his “Armchair Expert” podcast, after spending three years under Spotify’s banner. “I could not be more excited about making Wondery our home,” Shepard said in a statement.
Spotify declined to comment on negotiations to renew Cooper’s contract, but an insider confirmed that talks were ongoing.
The insiders told TheWrap that agents for Cooper are angling to get her a deal that is similar, or beyond, that of Rogan, her Spotify stable-mate. That deal— estimated to be worth as much as $250 million — involves an upfront minimum guarantee, plus a revenue-sharing agreement based on ad sales. More importantly, it includes a video format on YouTube. Cooper is also looking for a revenue-share deal, plus an agreement to do other TV work, the insiders said.
They also said that she intends to develop TV and digital streaming along with her audio deal. As a broadcasting insider said, “Alex is a rock star on audio, and a star-in-waiting on visual. This new deal could change everything for her business.”
A spokesperson for Cooper at her agency UTA declined to comment for this story.
Cooper is the most-listened-to female podcaster globally, with a loyal fanbase dubbed the “Daddy Gang.” Recent guests on “Call Her Daddy” have included Jane Fonda, Post Malone, Gwyneth Paltrow, Shay Mitchell, Christina Aguilera, John Mayer, John Legend, Rebel Wilson, Adam Devine and Chelsea Handler.
And the Olympic show “Watch with Alex” on Peacock is expected to feature her signature style of unvarnished conversations with Olympic athletes.
From soccer player to podcast powerhouse
Cooper, who grew up in Newtown, Pa., played soccer at Boston University, where she graduated with a degree in film and television. After moving to New York City, she struck gold with her raunchy “Call Her Daddy” podcast about sex and dating, which she created with her roommate Sofia Franklyn in 2018. Barstool Sports distributed the podcast until June 2021, when Cooper signed an exclusive $60 million deal with Spotify.
“There’s a passion that Alex Cooper’s audience has for her, and when she said, we’re going to Spotify, everyone picked up Spotify…and they had to become Spotify subscribers,” Rich Greenfield, a Partner and Media and Technology Analyst at LightShed Partners, told TheWrap.
“Her fans have a relationship with her almost like she’s their best friend,” Greenfield continued. “She talks about her life and there’s a level of connection that you make with a podcast. It’s very intimate and personal, and it allows for a far deeper connection with the audience that you really don’t find in other forms of media. And Alex Cooper’s one of the best there is in the world at that.”
Cooper and Franklyn got into a much-reported dispute with Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy in 2020, which ended with Franklyn leaving the show. Cooper continued to host the podcast on her own. She took a new direction, focusing on celebrity interviews, women’s rights and mental health.
Last year, she and her producer husband, Matt Kaplan, founded Trending, a media company aimed at Gen Z audiences. Kaplan is the founder and CEO of ACE Entertainment and producer of Netflix’s “XO, Kitty” and “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.” Through her subsidiary company Unwell, Cooper has a stable of influencers hosting podcasts including Alix Earle, Madeline Argy and Harry Jowsey. The couple is also optioning books and developing reality shows.
In January, Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy” podcast was made available on major audio platforms after two and half years exclusively on Spotify. Full episodes were made available on Apple Podcasts, iHeartPodcasts, Amazon Music and other services, while Spotify would continue to have exclusive distribution rights to the video version of “Call Her Daddy.”
Drawing on her background as an athlete, Cooper is also leading “Watch with Alex Cooper,” a series of interactive watch parties that will stream on NBC’s Peacock during the Paris Olympics, which run from July 26 to August 11. She is also doing more in-depth interviews with athletes including gymnast Simone Biles, which will air in prime time during the Games.
Cooper landed the Olympics deal after she was introduced to Molly Solomon, the executive producer and president of NBC Olympics production, by her agent, UTA CEO Jeremy Zimmer. “I was just so impressed,” Solomon told The Wall Street Journal after they met. “She’s this generation’s Oprah Winfrey.”
Cooper’s Olympic broadcasts, Greenfield said, are “a brilliant move by the team at NBC Sports. It is one of those unique moves solving the problem of how do you get younger people to care about the Olympics. Who can we bring in that young people, especially young women, are passionately connected to? And that’s Alex.”
Greenfield foresees Cooper becoming a tour de force in doing high-level interviews. “She can get the young stars, she got Miley Cyrus, and she can get the talent that Barbara Walters would have got in her day,” he said. “The media world is literally Alex’s for the taking.”
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