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Are esports a growing market with a huge amount of future potential? Yes. Did investors get too far out ahead of their skis with assuming that esports would quickly overtake traditional pro sports in market value? Definitely yes. Sports-business billionaires and gaming executives had hopes that esports could one day could scale into an organization like the National Basketball Association. But after a boom five years ago, several prominent esports teams and organizations, particularly in the US, are contracting, the result of a broad economic downturn, a venture capital industry that’s no longer willing to accept growth without profits and a crypto meltdown that has undercut a significant source of backing.

The Rebooting writes about the death of the “platisher” Of course, developing proprietary tech is the normal course of many businesses. When you come up with problems somewhat unique to your business and without any easy off-the-shelf solution, you build it yourself. The problem comes when this goes from being…

Bloomberg predicts a pullback in brand advertising could do just that: At some level, podcast shops might actually be in a stronger position than other media organizations to weather this storm. Though the networks have sought big brand dollars, they haven’t yet completely shaken free of the advertisers that helped build the space: direct response brands, such as mattress companies, meal kits and health supplements like Athletic Greens.

An author writes about what happened when her novel blew up on TikTok: My novel got the kind of reviews that debut novelists dream about. But getting great reviews from legacy media doesn’t ensure that your debut novel is going to sell — BookTok does.

Puck writes about the diminishing returns of streaming hits: In fact, 50 percent of all of Netflix’s Top 10 English-speaking debuts premiered in 2022, including Ozark’s fourth season and Bridgerton’s second season. It’s an impressive feat, and yet it’s entirely discordant with the fact that Netflix also had arguably its worst year on record. The company lost subscribers in its second and third quarters, and gained only 100,000 subs in the U.S. and Canada in its most recent quarter. And, despite a recent rebound, its stock is still down some 50 percent from a year ago. Netflix is projecting subscriber growth of 4.5 million in Q4, about half the number that joined in Q4 2021. Revenue has slowed alongside subscriber growth, and churn rates are still higher than normal at the company.

The Wall Street Journal reports on why Jeff Bezos is considering spinning off Arc, the content management platform developed at the Washington Post, into its own company: Incubating a tech startup inside a larger company — and drawing in the investment and talent needed to build it into a larger…

Passionfruit wrote about the processes that some influencers undertake to vet brands before agreeing to work with them: Sarah Hickam, head of talent at influencer relations and talent management company Shine Talent Group … has worked with creator specialists like doctors, dermatologists, and nutritionists, but also has a large roster of lifestyle, fashion, and food creators. Many of the influencers she works with ask questions to brands before they sign, such as: What responsibility do you take with the waste from your products? What is in these ingredients?“You would probably be surprised at how many creators say no to partnerships,” Hickam said.

This seems pretty significant: Edison Research announces the Top Podcast Networks in the U.S. for total network reach in Q3 2022, as SXM Media, Spotify, and iHeartRadio take the top three spots, respectively. After falling behind Spotify by a narrow margin in the Q2 report, SXM edges back ahead this time. Each are well out ahead of third place iHeartRadio, which in turn is comfortably head of the fourth spot on the chart, Audioboom. The list ranks the most listened-to podcast networks based on total audience reach from Edison Podcast Metrics.