Bomani Jones Moves ‘The Right Time’ Podcast to Playmaker

Bomani Jones has found a new home for his long-running show “The Right Time.” The former ESPN and HBO host is teaming with podcast company Playmaker, Deadline reported in an exclusive interview on Tuesday, and Awful Announcing said the move comes with a new studio in Harlem, refreshed branding and the possibility of a subscription offering.

Playmaker is based in New York and owned by Danish digital sports media company Better Collective, according to Deadline. Its roster includes “The Roommates Show” with New York Knicks teammates Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart, a bowling series hosted by Dodgers star Mookie Betts and several Shaquille O’Neal projects, Deadline reported. Awful Announcing added that the network’s largely athlete-led lineup also features Shannon Sharpe, Marshawn Lynch and Paul Pierce.

“The Right Time” has moved several times. Awful Announcing says Jones hosted it on ESPN Radio from 2015 to 2017 before it became a podcast in 2018, and that he took it to Wave Sports + Entertainment in October 2023 after his ESPN contract expired that July. Deadline reports that Jones acquired the rights to the show in 2021, and that he also hosted the HBO late-night series “Game Theory” in 2022 and 2023.

The show quietly started production in its new purpose-built Harlem studio a few days before the announcement, Deadline reported, and Awful Announcing said the studio debuted on the Oct. 1 episode. “Our time at Wave Sports was fantastic,” Jones said at the top of that episode, as quoted by Awful Announcing. “They got us to different places, and now, we’re here with Playmaker, and this is going to help take us even farther.” He had recorded the show from home for the past six years, the outlet noted.

Jones told Deadline he held off on publicizing the move until everything was ready at once. “We’re going to move into a new studio. We’re going to change the imaging around the show,” he said. “So I wanted it to be that when people looked up, one day it was going to be like, ‘Oh, wow, this is different. This has been improved. This has been elevated.’”

Money is part of the plan, too. “We are working on subscriptions,” Jones told Deadline, adding that some of the details still need to be worked out with Playmaker. He said a physical studio makes it easier to sell sponsorships in different ways, pointing to the branded items visible on Pat McAfee’s show, and said Playmaker’s creativity around sales was one of its draws. Neither outlet reported financial terms of the partnership.

Jones also reflected on how crowded the video podcast market has become. “There are a lot of people I’ve never heard of who are out here putting up really, really big numbers, and I’m the guy that has to figure out how to learn from them as much as vice versa,” he told Deadline. For more audio industry news, visit our Podcast News page.

Verification: Details of the Playmaker partnership, the new studio and Jones’ quotes come from Deadline (Dade Hayes, Oct. 6) and Awful Announcing (Megan Armstrong, Oct. 6). The show’s history before 2018 and its Wave Sports period are from Awful Announcing.