There is no official comment from either company at the time of this post.
The question naturally arises: Would this be a merger or acquisition? No definitive word on that, but we see the New York Times reporting that SiriusXM would acquire iHeart. In contrast, Variety portrays the deal as a merger rather than a takeover.
Whatever the deal structure, the resulting organization would be mammoth in its radio and satellite reach, revenue, and audience size. iHeart, which operates more than 860 terrestrial radio stations in the U.S., is also the #1 and #2 podcast publisher in the U.S. according to the March edition of Podtrac’s Top Publishers & Networks ranker (HERE).
s iHeartMedia claims to reach 250 million monthly listeners
We see some pushback chatter on the speculatively reported merger. Kevin Erickson, Director of the Future of Music Coalition, a 26 year old advocacy group at the intersection of music, technology, and policy, is blunt:
“It’s obviously problematic from a competition policy perspective. […] Regulators with any backbone at all would block this merger immediately. (Kevin Erickson, Director at Future of Music Coalition)
And Ashley Carman, who writes about podcasting and music for Bloomberg:
“Though talks are preliminary, a deal like this would be massive for the audio world and comes as radio is losing ground to podcasts.” […] “This, to me, just speaks to how important podcasts will be moving forward and emphasizes the decline of radio in the years to come.”
SiriusXM is scheduled to release its corporate earnings for Q1 2026 on Thursday of this week. We are certainly expecting to hear more about this.