Crowd Network delivers record-breaking summer season, leading the way for athlete-owned podcasts

Crowd Network (Crowd), the UK home of athlete-owned podcasts, has celebrated its most successful summer to date, with audience figures across its sports shows reaching 280 million social views between June and September 2025.

With a growing roster of shows spanning football, cricket, rugby and cycling, Crowd has firmly established itself as the leading UK podcast network for athlete-owned content. Its shows feature some of the biggest names in sports and have built engaged fan communities, collaborating with brands for sponsorship deals.

Crowd has expanded into new sports to strengthen its existing portfolio. For The Love of Cricket, hosted by Jos Buttler and Stuard Broad, launched in June and quickly became a hit. Its first Test series coverage — on the India Series — delivered over one million listens and attracted more than 67 million views.

Ahead of the Women’s Euros, Crowd launched Long Story Short hosted by former Lionesses Jill Scott and Karen Carney. It quickly built a committed audience, with the show’s coverage generating 13.4 million social views and 160,000 longform streams, with episodes recorded on location in Switzerland. Karen Carney is currently taking part in Strictly Come Dancing.

Most recently, Crowd also produced the Official Rugby World Cup 2025 Podcast, presented by Asahi Super Dry and hosted by Betty Glover and Anne Onwusiri, highlighting its position at the forefront of women’s rugby coverage. The team also expanded For The Love of Rugby, hosted by Dan Cole and Ben Youngs, to cover the women’s tournament with an extended line-up of hosts including Shaunagh Brown and Ruby Tui (pictured above). And cycling was another area of growth for Crowd, with the launch of Watts Occurring Femmes, Crowd’s first dedicated women’s cycling podcast.

The network’s commercial strength, and work with brands, also grew. In July, Crowd welcomed industry leader Darragh Kelly as Director of Strategic and Commercial Partnerships to drive onboarding new brands that align authentically with Crowd’s podcasts. Crowd is now working with the likes of Skoda, Sage, Mitsubishi and BrewDog, reinforcing its appeal to household brands seeking meaningful engagement with podcast audiences.

Mike Carr, CEO of Crowd, said: “The summer was a record-breaking season for us. We expanded into new sports, welcomed some of the biggest names to our roster, and surpassed our expectations for audience numbers. It’s been brilliant to watch how our athlete-owned model has built thriving fan communities and given athletes a platform beyond their professional sporting careers.”

Louise Gwilliam, Talent Director at Crowd, added: “Women’s sports has been at the heart of our success in recent months, especially with victories for the Lionesses and the Red Roses boosting demand for authentic content. Not only do our shows create fan communities and widen the careers of our talent, but they are also a platform for brands to show genuine support. We’re proud to be driving change through podcasting and playing a part in women’s sports achieving the commercial support and recognition it deserves.”