SiriusXM, a company most well-known for its satellite radio channels, is buying the podcasting company Stitcher from E.W. Scripps in a deal worth $325 million. The company confirmed the deal today after The Wall Street Journal first reported it last week. The move sets Sirius to compete even more seriously against Spotify, iHeartMedia, and Apple for dominance of the podcasting space.
Stitcher is not only a popular podcasting app with a premium, ad-free subscription service, but it’s also a network that, combined with its other entity Earwolf, produces shows like Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend. Scripps also combined Stitcher with Midroll Media, a podcast ad company that sells ads for other shows like The Dream and Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness that it acquired in 2015 for $50 million. The Sirius deal will give it ownership of all these companies, which, in some cases, could be redundant with what it already owns and operates.