Ryan Clark, Channing Crowder and Fred Taylor are taking The Pivot to Netflix, but this story did not start with a streaming deal. The Pivot Netflix deal is really the latest chapter in a four-year bet on ownership, chemistry and knowing when a business situation has run its course.
Beginning September 8, new episodes of The Pivot will stream on Netflix twice a week as part of a multiyear partnership. The agreement also reaches beyond the podcast itself. Clark’s Pivot25 Productions will create bonus episodes for Netflix, while the streamer receives first negotiation rights on future Pivot25 projects. Existing episodes will remain accessible through YouTube, giving the trio a major new distribution partner without completely abandoning the audience that helped build the brand.
That last part matters because The Pivot was built after its hosts learned some hard lessons about building something valuable without having the business structure to match.
Before The Pivot existed, Crowder and Taylor were major pieces of Brandon Marshall’s I Am Athlete, the athlete-led podcast that launched during the pandemic and quickly became one of sports media’s breakout digital shows. The conversations were loose, funny, and personal, creating the feeling that viewers were sitting inside a locker room instead of watching a traditional studio interview.
However, the success moved faster than the paperwork.
After leaving I Am Athlete, Taylor said the group had not properly handled the business side as the show grew. He explained that Marshall had made the initial investment and ultimately gained majority control while the other personalities did not have the ownership stake they expected. Taylor described himself and the others as essentially talent rather than true stakeholders. Crowder and Taylor eventually walked away, along with producer Alicia Zubikowski.
Instead of trying to recreate the same situation somewhere else, they actually pivoted.
Zubikowski connected with Clark, who joined Crowder and Taylor for a new show. On January 4, 2022, The Pivot premiered with an episode appropriately titled “The Truth.” The hosts openly discussed leaving I Am Athlete, business relationships, and the reality that sometimes changing direction is necessary.
Taylor even gave the show its name.
“To pivot is a positive,” Clark explained during the launch, describing it as accepting circumstances, adjusting and moving forward. That philosophy quickly became more than branding.
The new team had to build from scratch, travel for interviews, and convince major names to sit down with a platform that did not have a traditional television network behind it. Within months, the formula was working. By June 2022, The Pivot had already generated approximately 27 million YouTube views across 41 episodes, with guests including Shaquille O’Neal, Charles Barkley, Floyd Mayweather and Alex Rodriguez.
Then came another big business swing.
In May 2024, The Pivot announced a multiyear partnership with Fanatics, giving the show access to the company’s growing sports ecosystem. At the time, the podcast had accumulated more than 154 million views. Yet the relationship ended before the multiyear vision could fully play out. Representatives for both sides confirmed in January 2025 that the partnership had ended in late 2024 and described the separation as mutual. The Pivot returned to operating independently and began exploring other platform opportunities.
Once again, the show kept moving.
That resilience became even more relevant in July 2026 when ESPN ended Clark’s run after more than a decade with the network. Clark was informed while appearing on “NFL Live” and did not finish the program. ESPN’s cuts came during a larger restructuring connected to its integration of NFL Network assets, although Clark later said on The Pivot that he believed his departure was a firing rather than a standard layoff.
Barely a month later, the platform Clark helped own had secured one of its biggest deals yet.
That timing is hard to ignore.
The Netflix agreement does not erase the failed business relationships, uncomfortable exits, or years spent building independently. It makes them part of the reason this moment carries weight.
The Pivot started because its creators decided they needed a different business arrangement. It survived when another major partnership ended. And when Clark suddenly lost one of the biggest platforms in sports television, he still had one with his name attached to it.
Four years later, Netflix is not creating The Pivot.
It is buying into what the trio already built.
