Podcast companies turn to live events to capture growing advertiser spend

SiriusXM’s live podcasts, whose audiences typically involve 40 or 50 fans, are not ticketed events. However, they represent a growing revenue stream for the company thanks to sponsorships by advertisers such as Hershey’s and Macy’s, with SiriusXM holding the events at both the company’s in-house recording studio in its New York City headquarters and at venues such as Avalon Hollywood. So far this year, SiriusXM Media has more than doubled the number of sponsors and corresponding ad revenue for its live podcast events, according to svp of strategic solutions Karina Montgomery, who declined to give exact figures but said that “ad revenue from these events is already up 160 percent as of June 2025, compared to all of 2024.”

SiriusXM frames its live podcast events as a premium sponsorship opportunity, giving brands a chance to connect with particularly engaged fans while still showing up as a sponsor in any audio and video content produced or streamed from the event. In addition to benefiting from the usual ad reads, podcast event sponsors are able to place their logos and branding around the recording studio and live audience, with opportunities for in-person activations such as branded coffee bars for attendees.

“You’re not necessarily going to garner scale from the experience in the room, but we often create additional bonus content that our podcasters put into the RSS feed, or on YouTube, that the sponsor is incorporated into,” said SiriusXM svp of podcast content Adam Sachs. “So they get the benefit of both of these worlds.”

SiriusXM is not the only podcast company that has stepped up its live event business in 2025. In 2023, Vox Media produced five sponsored live podcast tapings; last year, the company put on 19 sponsored podcast events. In the first six months of 2025 alone, Vox Media has produced 21 live podcast recordings. Some of these events were ticketed, and others were free, but they all prominently featured sponsors such as Smartsheet and Bulleit Whiskey, the latter of which was a first-time sponsor for Vox Media.

“Typically, experiential can be a heavy lift,” said Vox Media CRO Geoff Schiller. “As it relates to other live activations, live podcast tapings are a very light lift, so it’s also a sweet spot for brands.”

The surge in the number of live podcast events in 2025 reflects a broader shift: advertisers are betting bigger on podcasts — not just as an audio channel but as a full-fledged creator economy play. With the rise of video podcasting and hosts increasingly viewed as influencers, brands see podcasts as a high-impact way to reach loyal and engaged audiences and extend their podcast presence beyond the feed. John Newall, the svp of marketing of Smartsheet — which sponsored a Vox Media podcast event at South By Southwest in March — said that his company’s overall marketing spend on podcasts had increased year-over-year between 2024 and 2025, citing the live recordings as a significant selling point. (Schiller declined to specify the prices of Vox Media’s live event inventory, but said that the company’s live events typically command a higher rate than standard ad reads.)

“We had a coffee bar outside, so when people were lining up before or after they went, they could go grab a coffee on us — which enabled us to capture leads,” he said.

Hershey’s vp of media and marketing technology Vinny Renaldi said that live podcast events were “a rapidly growing part of our integrated marketing and content strategy,” rather than simply an extension of the company’s pre-existing podcast partnerships. He did not provide numbers.

“They allow us to build deeper, more tangible connections with both the podcasts we partner with and their communities,” he said.

Live podcast events are a growing trend for both podcast companies and individual podcast creators. Theo Gadd, a co-founder of the live podcast event platform and agency PodLife, said that the number of events that he had posted on his platform, which tracks live podcast events, had grown considerably year-over-year in the two years since he started his company, although he did not share specific figures. At the moment, Gadd said, just over 50 percent of the events featured by PodLife are sponsored.

“If the show has a pre-existing sponsor, we always tell them, ‘go talk to them; let them know what you’re doing,’” Gadd said. “Because events are such a nice touchpoint, and brands are really keen to get involved.”