El Segundo-based Podium Entertainment, the third-largest audiobook publisher in the world, has been sold to private equity firms Shamrock Capital and Flexpoint Ford.
Financial details weren’t disclosed, but The Wall Street Journal reported the deal valued the company at more than $400 million. Podium, founded in 2012, has been in private equity hands since 2019, when the company was acquired by Presidio Investors. Under Presidio’s watch, the publisher grew its catalog from 1,200 titles to more than 15,000 today.
The incoming ownership will bring Podium to new international markets, strengthen its partnerships with platforms like Spotify and Audible, and allow the company to wade deeper into e-book and print formats, Podium Chief Executive Scott Dickey said.
“Definitely, there’s an eye towards international expansion and certainly globalizing the content,” said Dickey, noting that the publisher sees opportunity in Spanish- and German-language content.
The investors bring a breadth of expertise in negotiating with consumer-facing streaming platforms, Dickey said. Westwood-based Shamrock has invested more than $3 billion in its content strategy spanning music, film, television, sports, video games and the creator economy. Flexpoint Ford, headquartered in Chicago, has an investment in GoldState
Music, which buys and manages music rights.
Former Spotify executive David Kaefer joined Podium’s board as part of the deal.
Focus on online fandom
Co-founded in Toronto by James Tonn and Greg Lawrence as an indie-focused startup audiobook label, Podium hit its stride after discovering and signing Andy Weir’s science-
fiction bestseller “The Martian” in 2013.
The company has continued to sign small, self-published authors alongside established names. In recent years, Podium has profited from the surging popularity of titles in the “romantasy” — romantic fantasy — genre that gain virality on “BookTok,” the bookish side of social media platform TikTok. Romance titles, which represented a fifth of the publisher’s catalog some three years ago, now make up more than half of it. Podium has also leaned into social media-native marketing that taps niche fan interests like literary role-playing games and “dark romance,” Dickey said.
“(Podium’s) largest value is having a more digitally focused mindset, and then really understanding how to build fandom in a significant way on behalf of the author,” he said.
