Conan O’Brien is “retiring” from late-night television to manage an audio empire. His company, Team Coco (official name Conaverticals LLC) manages a portfolio of podcasts and distributes video clips across YouTube, Facebook and other platforms. Collectively revenue is expected to jump from $10 million this year to $20 million in 2021. Conan’s most popular podcast, “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend,” accounts for two-thirds of Team Coco’s 13 million total monthly downloads.
Per an article in the WSJ, one of the most impressive aspects of Team Coco is what they can charge for sponsorship opportunities: “Mr. O’Brien’s arch style lets him satirize the sponsorship system and himself as pitchman, while still delivering the goods and preventing listeners from skipping the ads. Advertisers pay a premium for that: between $40 and $50 for every thousand downloads of his show, Team Coco says, roughly twice the typical fee for a popular podcast.”