Podcasters Spreaker and BlogTalkRadio to Merge

RADIO ONLINE | Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Spreaker & BlogTalkRadio's respective boards have approved a merger of the two companies creating a combined entity comprised of more than 50,000 podcasts with millions of listeners globally. Spreaker co-founder and CEO Francesco Baschieri will serve as President of the combined companies. In connection with the merger, shareholders from each of Spreaker and BlogTalkRadio will be making investments in support of the new company's growth plan, which will be rolled out over the next several months. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Baschieri said, "We're combining Spreaker's best-in-class mobile and web content management system and creation tools with BlogTalkRadio's first-to-market monetization platform. The merged company operates at massive scale delivering unique value to independent hosts, podcast networks, and larger mainstream publishers alike."

He added, "BlogTalkRadio recently released its 'big data' audience data solution, Cortex. Through the combination of this technology platform with Spreaker's sophisticated mobile apps and creation tools, we can deliver the 'holy grail' to the podcasting industry -- targeted buys enriched by analytics and audience data that provide extremely high accuracy and transparency to advertisers, while also providing rich feedback loops for content creators to improve their content. This tightly-coupled capability, supported by Spreaker's existing promotional deals and distribution channels with the likes of iHeartRadio, iTunes and Sonos, will make our company an instant leader in the space."