Only The Super Bowl Gets More Viewers Than Joe Rogan
This article is more than 2 years old
Eat your heart our legacy media. Because Joe Rogan has sidestepped the historical and traditional paths to gaining a huge viewership/ listenership and now has one of the very biggest platforms out there. And it looks like the numbers are only growing. The podcaster and comedian is coming under fire for a recent episode of his, but it seems to have only strengthened the overall number of folks actually tuning in to hear what he says. The numbers on his podcast are simply ridiculous, with really only a once-a-year event like the Super Bowl eclipsing his show in terms of how many people are watching and listening.
With Joe Rogan making the media rounds right now thanks to an interview he recently gave with Dr. Robert Malone, it was a nice time for folks to remind everyone just how big the dude’s audience is. Frankly, it’s staggering just the size and scope of his reach with crazy numbers to back it up. For starters, the average Joe Rogan episode sees about 11 million viewers/ listeners according to Spotify and Nielsen ratings. Check out how that stacks up against some other popular personalities on news outlets these days. Rogan is lapping the field.
From this perspective, it’s not even close. He’s more than tripling up on the next-closest dude in Tucker Carlson on Fox. Is this cherry-picked a bit to only bring out certain news sources? Sure, but considering the influence some of these other shows and talking heads have on their audience, it starts to give a sense of just how many people Joe Rogan is “talking to” each time out.
And in terms of single-episode highs, well that came from back in December when Joe Rogan interviewed Dr. McCullough about Covid-19, big Pharma, and a number of other topics. Rogan’s interviews are typically long-form and episodes can sometimes range over 2.5 hours. That one did numbers, at the time, over 40 million listeners/ watchers. The only program to do a bigger number last year was the Super Bowl between the Chiefs and Buccaneers which topped out at right around 93 million watchers. And after that, the rest of the list is mostly sporting events like NFL anyway.
There was another episode, back in 2020 that performed on a similar level. That was with Elon Musk which was reported to have had more than 49 million viewers. So there could be some competing episodes here, but it all points to the same thing: Joe Rogan is operating in a totally different stratosphere when it comes to engagement and viewership around a celebrity or personality.
This kind of engagement and audience was the driving reason behind Spotify striking an exclusive deal with Joe Rogan back in 2020 that was reportedly worth somewhere north of $100 million dollars. This particular deal wasn’t one to purchase the podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, but merely to license it for their platform exclusively. It was this company that a group of scientists recently penned an open letter to requesting the platform more closely monitor what kind of information comes through the microphone. It’s unlikely, with these kinds of numbers, that Spotify does something with Rogan’s podcast.
