The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show is the country’s No. 1 talk-radio program in the 12–3 p.m. ET slot, reaching about 7 million monthly listeners on 550 stations, according to syndicator Premiere Networks.
The show took over Rush Limbaugh’s time slot in 2021 after Limbaugh’s death. Five years later, hosts Clay Travis and Buck Sexton have built a top-rated franchise that also ranks consistently near Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro on iHeart metrics and has expanded into an eight-podcast network.
The Wall Street Journal writes they describe their on-air style as “buddy-cop movie” energy: three hours a day, five days a week of banter on news, politics, sports and entertainment. They position the program as a more moderate conservative alternative to fringe or “woo-woo” competitors.
“How do we compete against the crazy?” Sexton has said. Travis added that flash-in-the-pan attention fades “if you’re constantly wrong or if you’re constantly crazy.”
Former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the show “one of the most enjoyable programs to join and listen to.” Sen. Ron Johnson and Rep. Jim Jordan have praised the hosts’ skepticism of Covid-era official guidance.
They regularly cover culture-war topics. In August, Sexton said the Democratic Party was “making plenty of room for the ultraprogressive commie maniacs” after Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan’s Senate primary with help from commentator Hasan Piker. Travis offered $10 million if the WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces played a state-champion high-school boys’ team; the Aces have not publicly responded.
They also discuss traditional conservative issues such as taxes, regulation, Florida property law and electability, comparing left-wing 2026 candidates to 2022 Republican nominees they viewed as too extreme.
Sexton, 44, is a former CIA counterterrorism analyst who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, later worked for the NYPD and Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze. He grew up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and attended tennis camp with Ivanka Trump.
Travis, 47, is a lawyer and creative-writing master’s graduate from near Nashville who founded sports site OutKick in 2011 and sold it to Fox for about $100 million in 2021. Both say they were raised in apolitical homes.
Sexton identified as conservative young; Travis was a moderate Democrat who worked on Al Gore’s 2000 campaign and Jim Cooper’s 2002 House race (he was fired after crashing Cooper’s first wife’s car) and first voted Republican in 2020 for Trump.
“I don’t think I’ve really changed that much,” Travis said. “I think the world around me has shifted substantially.”
I'm listening to The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show ♫ @iHeartRadio https://t.co/82LigR2ln7
— Tom Benson (@Tombenson1) September 2, 2026
In July they livestreamed the radio show on YouTube for the first time. In August Travis launched Sport & State, a sports-politics-pop-culture site planning live programming from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET. They say they want “good guys that they would want to have as neighbors” and hope to reach more young mothers. “I want the woman who’s 25 or 30 or 35, who’s just had her first kid and is like ‘what’s going on?’” Sexton said.
“Because God forbid they start watching ‘The View’ or something.”