It Was Just a Podcast. Now, It’s Kelce Land.

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It Was Just a Podcast. Now, It’s Kelce Land.

When Amazon gutted its podcast company, it built a new department that made creators kings, starting with the football stars Jason and Travis Kelce.

Jason and Travis Kelce, right, the hosts of the “New Heights” podcast, at the Thriller Country Club in San Francisco.

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Balazs Gardi for The New York Times

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It Was Just a Podcast. Now, It’s Kelce Land.

When Amazon gutted its podcast company, it built a new department that made creators kings, starting with the football stars Jason and Travis Kelce.

Jason and Travis Kelce, right, the hosts of the “New Heights” podcast, at the Thriller Country Club in San Francisco.

Credit...

Balazs Gardi for The New York Times

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By

Jessica Testa

April 24, 2026

Just like radio stations of yore, podcasts have long supported themselves with commercial breaks and host-read advertisements. But last year, Amazon realized there could be another way.

In August, the company took a sledgehammer to its podcasting arm, Wondery. What emerged from

the rubble

was a new and somewhat mysterious department called Creator Services, devoted to video podcasts.

Over the last six months, its central proposition has become clear: What if, instead of selling advertisements on podcasts, Amazon helped build mini-worlds around the shows and sold

those

?

The idea wasn’t new to podcasting. Companies like

SiriusXM

and

Dear Media

had begun marketing more facets of their hosts’ lives and businesses: selling ads on their personal social media accounts, bankrolling and hawking tickets for live events, teaming up with sponsors on new products. Many top podcasters are already multihyphenate entrepreneurs. Alex Cooper of “

Call Her Daddy

” sells energy drinks and directs commercials for Google; the self-help author and podcaster Mel Robbins sells protein shots.

But only Amazon dismembered a company. The demise of Wondery — the onetime home of “Dirty John” and “Dr. Death,” and acquired for $300 million only a few years earlier — eliminated about 100 jobs, including the chief executive. Audio-only podcasts were shipped to Audible, the audiobook company, while Creator Services was forged from other departments to test and refine this new model for on-camera talent, like Dax Shepard, Kiki Palmer and LeBron James. (Their shows still operate under the name Wondery.)

Creator Services’ first guinea pigs were Jason and Travis Kelce, the brother football stars and hosts of “New Heights,” who signed a podcasting deal in 2024 with Wondery reportedly worth

$100 million

over three years. Last summer, “New Heights” broke YouTube records when Travis Kelce’s fiancée, Taylor Swift, joined the laid-back, fratty show.

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