Fox’s Red Seat Ventures is coming for Substack.
Led by Chris Balfe, Red Seat made its name running sales and production services for podcasters including Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and Nancy Grace.
Now, as the lines between creators, podcasters, and writers continue to blur, it’s adding newsletter functionality to its stack. The newsletter feature will live under Supercast, a company Red Seat bought this year that offers a menu of subscription options like livestreaming for creators. They can now build free and paid newsletters and track their performance on a dashboard. The newsletter feature is included in Supercast’s base pricing of $0.59 per subscriber per month, with custom pricing available for big networks and media companies.
“We want to be a one-stop shop for creators,” Balfe told Business Insider. “Whereas Substack has done a really good job going after written-first creators, and then adding podcasting capability on top of that, we’re going at it from the other direction and saying, for most of the creators that we work with, their audio and video is their main business. So, let’s add other features like email and livestreaming.”
Balfe pointed to comedian Tony Hinchcliffe of “Kill Tony” as an early example of Red Seat’s success in using a multifaceted approach. Since launching a subscription, Kill Tony+, Hinchcliffe has signed up thousands of people who get his uncensored, ad-free show and bonus content.
Hinchcliffe plans to create another, super-expensive tier where people would pay to get roasted by him, Balfe said.
“It would be like $10,000 or something like that to roast you,” Balfe said. “We will sell out of these so bad.”
He also pointed to an early pilot of Supercast’s livestreaming with “This American Life,” which drew more than 1,700 paying audience members.
Red Seat is aiming for 10 big deals
Balfe wants to make Red Seat a creator-economy juggernaut, with some 200 shows. The company has around 30 shows now and is looking to do a lot more deals quickly, especially in sports, lifestyle, entertainment, and tech. Red Seat’s top creator deals generally pay a minimum guarantee against projected sales.
“We really want to accelerate our rate of dealmaking,” Balfe said. “I think if we did 10 big deals in the next 12 months, that would be big.”
Balfe disagrees with industry insiders like iHeartMedia CEO Bob Pittman, who say podcast distribution deals are getting too expensive. He said there was strong advertiser demand and that hosts have the ability to branch out into other areas. Balfe said he’s doing deals where the show itself accounts for as little as 60% of the revenue, with the rest coming from other projects.
Balfe also sees the potential for creators to make longer deals. YouTubers are often used to getting short-term ad deals, while Red Seat is pushing for 12-month partnerships for its clients, he said.
“We’re trying to do annual deals,” he said. “YouTubers are attracted to that sort of consistency that the podcast business model has allowed.”
Podcasts are TV now
Podcasting has become more of a video-first medium as it has evolved from its audio roots.
Forty-four percent of US podcast consumers watched a video podcast in the past week, up from 40% in 2025, according to a report from trade group Sounds Profitable released this month. YouTube is the top podcast platform, used by 63% in the past 12 months, ahead of Spotify (33%), Netflix (21%), and Apple Podcasts (15%).
Balfe thinks video will continue to grow its share of the pie. People are watching more podcasts on YouTube, especially on TV screens. Spotify is making the case that video consumption outperforms audio on its platform.
Major streamers are also hungry for podcasts, and linear TV players like Versant’s MS NOW are looking for lower-cost programming to fill their schedules. Red Seat’s shows aren’t running on Fox’s linear networks today, but Balfe said it’s only a matter of time before that happens.
“I look at the next phase of video opportunities, and we have every streamer that wants our content now: Hulu, Peacock, and Amazon Prime, and Paramount Plus,” Balfe said. “We also have the linear guys that are starting to come to us and say, ‘Actually, what you’re producing looks kind of like a talk show. Maybe we should just put it in late night or daytime.'”
