Wondery Plans Bigger Sports Focus, Signing LeBron James To Its Podcast Team.

Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James is among the growing number of athletes hosting a podcast while still active in their sport. As the NBA legend prepares to release a second season of Mind The Game in April, James will take on NBA Hall-of-Famer Steve Nash as his new co-host.

James has inked a three-year deal with Wondery and parent Amazon.

Under the agreement Mind The Game will be distributed by Wondery, which will also handle advertising sales for the show. Video episodes will also become available on Amazon Prime Video. They had been released on YouTube previously. Financial terms of the three-year agreement were not released.

Wondery CEO Jen Sargent told the New York Times that sports will be a “big focus” for the company this year. “We have an opportunity to create a home for the best sports voices out there. And podcasting is often the way in to doing that,” she said. Sargent also points out that sports podcasts monetize “really well.” That is because the genre doesn’t face the sort of hesitancy from advertisers that some of Wondery’s true crime podcasts might.

Sargent tells the Times that as Wondery does more in video, it will look to leverage its ties to Prime Video and Amazon’s Fire TV channels and Echo devices. While YouTube has a larger reach, Prime Video reaches 200 million monthly customers with a greater opportunity to tie content to Amazon merchandise sales.

The signing of James’ show follows the announcement last August that Wondery had inked a deal with Jason and Travis Kelce’s New Heights worth a reported $100 million. The three-year deal similarly gives the Amazon-owned studio exclusive advertising and distribution rights to New Heights on both audio and video. The series will remain widely distributed, but Wondery will offer ad-free listening on its Wondery+ app.

The Wondery deal may not be noticeable to listeners, but the show’s other change will. NBA Hall-of-Famer Steve Nash will take the chair previously held by former player and coach JJ Redick, who left the podcast after only nine episodes when he became head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers.

The podcast — which is produced by James’ Uninterrupted — will retain its straightforward premise. Its hosts sit down weekly to discuss the state of the game and wax poetic about the game they love.

“We’re gonna continue to preach the game. How it’s supposed to be taught, how it’s supposed to be viewed, and why me and Steve grew up loving the game,” James said Wednesday on The Pat McAfee Show podcast. “This is what brought us together. This is what the essence of the game should be talked to, to not only the generation that’s playing now, but the generation that’s gonna come up after us.”