Azerion yesterday announced a commercial partnership with Amaury Media to manage the sale of digital audio advertising inventory across the L'Equipe podcast portfolio in France. The deal, confirmed on May 4, 2026, positions Azerion as the exclusive programmatic monetization partner for approximately fifteen sports-focused podcasts operated under the L'Equipe brand, while Amaury Media continues its own direct sales activities in parallel.

The announcement adds a significant block of French-language sports audio inventory to Azerion's existing premium audio network, which already includes Radio France and Skyrock among its partners. According to the announcement, monetization will be powered by Azerion's proprietary technology stack - the same infrastructure the Amsterdam-based company deploys across its broader network of audio and entertainment publishing partners.

What L'Equipe brings to the table

L'Equipe is not a marginal player in the French podcast market. According to the ACPM rankings from April 2024, L'Equipe held the number one position among French podcast brands with 1.5 million listeners, ahead of Slate and Bababam, both at 1.4 million, ARJ also at 1.4 million, and Hugo Decrypte at 1.3 million. Le Monde followed at 1.2 million. The gap between L'Equipe and its nearest competitors, though measured in fractions of a million, is notable for a brand whose editorial identity is entirely sport.

Amaury Media describes L'Equipe as reaching 7 out of 10 French people in contact with the brand each month, according to Cross Medias Mediametrie 2024 V2 data. The brand operates across four media formats: the daily newspaper Le journal L'Equipe, the weekly magazine Le magazine L'Equipe, the television channel La chaine L'Equipe, and the digital platform Le site L'Equipe. At the Grand Prix des Medias ceremony organized by CB News, L'Equipe received the award for Meilleur Titre de Presse - best press title - of the year 2024, a distinction covering both its magazine and its daily newspaper.

The podcast catalog that Azerion will now commercialize spans three main structural categories. Sport-specific showsinclude Big 5 (football), Crunch (rugby), Step Back (basketball), Swing (golf), Air Open (tennis), Ring Story (boxing), K-O (boxing), L'Avenir Leur Appartient (football), Roustan Foot (football), and Records Tres Personnels (athletics). News and current affairs formats include L'Equipe du Soir and L'Equipe de Greg, both described as daily sports news programs. A third category of narrative collections includes Une Deux, L'Enfer du Dard, Ejectes, Notre Envoye Special, Fenetre sur Corps, and L'Odyssee de Lewis.

Audience figures by show

The listener numbers across the flagship shows are substantial. According to publisher estimates covering the September 2024 to May 2025 season, Big 5 accumulated 1.9 million listens. Crunch reached 1.7 million over the same period. Step Back reached 1.5 million. Swing - the golf show, which targets a narrower audience segment - reached 450,000 listens.

These figures are publisher self-reported estimates and cover a nine-month window rather than a single month or a single release. Nevertheless, they illustrate the relative scale differences across format types: the football podcast outperforms the golf show by a factor of more than four. For media buyers planning campaigns around specific sports, these disparities are operationally relevant because they directly affect reach and CPM negotiations.

The season cycle itself carries commercial implications. Amaury Media's podcast offering documentation specifies the season as running September 2024 through May 2025 - a pattern that mirrors the sports calendar, peaking during football, rugby, and basketball competition periods and trailing off during the summer months. Brands buying exclusive season-long sponsorships are therefore locking into a specific content cadence tied to live competition schedules.

How the ad formats are structured

Amaury Media operates two distinct podcast advertising products, labeled L'Essentiel and L'Integral.

L'Essentiel is a season-long exclusive sponsorship attached to a single flagship show. According to the commercial documentation, the pre-roll format is capped at a maximum of 30 seconds, with a recommended maximum of 20 seconds for the opening position. Pricing for the 2024-2025 season was set at 35,000 euros net for Big 5, 32,000 euros net for Crunch, 28,000 euros net for Step Back, and 8,000 euros net for Swing. Only one advertiser per show is accepted under this model, giving the sponsor exclusive presence across the entire season's episodes.

L'Integral is structured as a monthly presence across the full L'Equipe podcast catalog rather than a single show. According to the commercial documentation, this product delivers 350,000 pre-roll impressions per month at a price of 5,000 euros net, subject to availability. The offer is reserved for a maximum of three advertisers simultaneously. The L'Integral model is available throughout the September 2024 to May 2025 season.

For major sporting events, Amaury Media operates dedicated podcast formats outside the standard catalog pricing. The Roland Garros daily tennis podcast Balle Neuve reached 760,000 listens across the 2024 edition, while the Tour de France podcast L'Equipe du Tour accumulated 1.7 million listens during the 2024 edition. Both are daily, multi-device formats with exclusive pre-roll integration at a maximum of 30 seconds. Pricing for these event-specific formats is handled on request.

Azerion's technology infrastructure and French audio positioning

Azerion was founded in 2014 and is listed on Euronext Amsterdam under the ticker AZRN. According to the company, it operates commercial teams in over 26 cities worldwide, with its headquarters in Amsterdam. The company's technology stack for audio monetization runs through its proprietary Hawk DSP and Azerion DMP, which enables audience segmentation using contextual and privacy-safe signals.

In France specifically, Azerion has been building its audio inventory position through successive partnerships. Radio France and Skyrock were already part of its premium audio network before this deal. Adding L'Equipe's podcast catalog - which, according to the ACPM April 2024 data, commands the largest audience of any French podcast brand - materially expands the French-language audio inventory available to buyers through Azerion's system.

Azerion's Hawk DSP previously expanded its European connected television reach through a technical integration with smartclip SSP, which added RTL AdAlliance's premium broadcast inventory to Azerion's available supply. That integration demonstrated Azerion's approach of combining its proprietary technology with external premium publisher relationships to build multi-format inventory depth across European markets.

The company has also used the Hawk DSP as a central element in partnership deals involving audio inventory in other markets. Deezer and Azerion entered an exclusive audio and video monetization agreement in Brazil, with direct integration through the Hawk DSP providing advertisers access to Deezer's exclusive inventory with automated deal management and real-time performance insights. The L'Equipe deal follows a similar structural logic: a premium publisher appoints Azerion to handle the programmatic layer while retaining its own direct sales capacity.

Why the French audio market is the context

This partnership lands in a market where the gap between audio consumption and audio advertising investment is well documented. Research from AdsWizz, covered by PPC Land in July 2025, identified a 22% engagement gap - consumers dedicate 31% of their media time to audio platforms, while advertisers allocate only 9% of their budgets to audio advertising. The programmatic infrastructure capable of closing that gap has been expanding steadily. Podcast advertising spending in Q4 2025 climbed 32% year-over-year according to Magellan AI data, with 1,482 new brands entering the channel during that period. Sports podcasts were the single most popular entry genre for first-time podcast advertisers in that quarter, attracting approximately 18.6% of new brands.

Sports media publishers have been moving aggressively to consolidate their podcast advertising infrastructure. Acast and The Athletic announced a global exclusive podcast sales representation deal in April 2025, covering more than 35 sports-focused podcasts across major leagues. The NBC Sports partnership with Triton Digital, covered by PPC Land in April 2026, placed the broadcaster's growing sports podcast portfolio on a unified infrastructure including dynamic ad insertion, audience demographic targeting, and IAB-certified measurement. The L'Equipe - Azerion deal follows a comparable structural pattern but is oriented specifically toward the French market.

France is also a market where Spotify has extended programmatic buying capabilities. Spotify expanded its automated podcast buying to approximately 170 million listeners globally on July 11, 2025, with France included among the eight markets where advertisers gained self-serve access to premium podcast inventory through Spotify Ads Manager. That expansion created new automated buying options for L'Equipe's content already distributed on Spotify. The Azerion deal addresses the monetization of audio inventory across all platforms where L'Equipe podcasts appear - including the L'Equipe app, Spotify, Deezer, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts - rather than any single distribution channel.

Amaury Media's broader cross-media structure

Amaury Media is the advertising sales agency for the media brands of the Amaury Group. Its portfolio extends beyond L'Equipe to include Journal du Golf (magazine, channel, website), Velo Magazine, and France Football. According to the company, it operates in France and more than 10 countries. In 2025, Amaury Media expanded its sports media reach by becoming the advertising sales partner for Tennis Channel - described as the only free-to-air channel fully dedicated to tennis - and for Ligue 1+, the official broadcaster of Ligue 1 McDonald's.

The cross-media dimension of Amaury Media's offering is relevant for understanding how the podcast inventory fits into larger campaigns. Amaury Media's 3 Etoiles package, for example, bundles three weeks of communication across television, the L'Equipe newspaper, and digital formats including the L'Equipe site and app. According to the commercial documentation, the package includes 105 television spots of 30 seconds each across La chaine L'Equipe, 3 banner positions in the newspaper, 1.4 million site skin impressions, 3 million app interstitial impressions, and 2 million in-read impressions across all devices, reaching 12 million male contacts aged 25 to 49, priced at 160,000 euros net net excluding tax. Podcast advertising sits outside this package and is sold separately.

The existence of this cross-media architecture is commercially significant because it means Azerion's new audio inventory can be positioned alongside display, video, and television touchpoints for brands that want to run coordinated campaigns across the L'Equipe audience. Media buyers working on sports-adjacent categories - automotive, financial services, athletic wear, energy drinks - can in principle layer programmatic audio delivered through Azerion against other L'Equipe formats sold directly through Amaury Media's sales teams.

What this means for media buyers

For practitioners buying audio programmatically, the immediate effect is that L'Equipe podcast inventory becomes accessible through Azerion's buying infrastructure. The Hawk DSP already handles multi-format buying across web, audio, connected television, and digital out-of-home. Adding a portfolio that holds the number one ranked French podcast brand - with flagship shows reaching between 450,000 and 1.9 million listens per season - means meaningful scale for French-language sports targeting.

Azerion has been expanding its footprint across European audio and CTV inventory through sequential partnerships, and the L'Equipe deal follows that trajectory. For buyers using Azerion's managed service or its DSP directly, access to L'Equipe audio does not require a separate insertion order with Amaury Media's sales team - the programmatic channel handles that layer.

The 350,000 monthly pre-roll impressions available under the L'Integral product, priced at 5,000 euros net and restricted to three advertisers simultaneously, offers a relatively contained entry point for brands testing French sports podcast advertising before committing to the higher-cost exclusive season sponsorships attached to individual shows. Those exclusive sponsorships - ranging from 8,000 euros net for Swing to 35,000 euros net for Big 5 - require a full-season commitment and place a single brand in the pre-roll position across every episode.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Azerion (EURONEXT: AZRN), a digital advertising platform headquartered in Amsterdam, and Amaury Media, the advertising sales agency for the Amaury Group's media brands including L'Equipe.

What: Amaury Media has appointed Azerion to manage the commercialization of its digital audio advertising inventory in France, covering approximately fifteen sports-focused podcasts under the L'Equipe brand. Amaury Media retains its direct sales activities alongside this arrangement. Monetization will be powered by Azerion's proprietary technology stack.

When: The partnership was announced on May 4, 2026.

Where: The deal covers the French market. L'Equipe podcasts are distributed across the L'Equipe app and website, Spotify, Deezer, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts.

Why: Azerion expands its premium French audio inventory beyond existing partners Radio France and Skyrock by adding the number one ranked French podcast brand by listenership. For Amaury Media, the deal adds a programmatic monetization layer to a podcast portfolio that generates millions of listens per season across sport-specific, news, and narrative formats, without replacing its existing direct sales capacity.

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