Comcast Ventures invested early in buzzy companies like Away and The Athletic. Here are its 3 top media themes for 2020.

• Comcast Ventures, the 20-year-old investment arm of media giant Comcast, was an early investor in unicorns like Away and Hippo as well as buzzy media companies The Athletic, Vox Media, and Cheddar.
• Its managing directors revealed the three media themes and related companies they're most bullish on heading into 2020.
• Read more BI Prime stories here.

Comcast Ventures, the 20-year-old investment arm of media giant Comcast, was an early investor in unicorns like Away and Hippo as well as buzzy media companies The Athletic, Vox Media, and Cheddar.

With about 150 companies in its portfolio, Comcast Ventures focuses on consumer and enterprise companies and has been investing in companies earlier in their life stage.

In pitching startups, Comcast Ventures emphasizes that while its mandate is to purely show financial returns, the fund can also leverage its parent Comcast Corp. and other services to help those startups grow. Two-thirds of the companies in its portfolio have some relationship with Comcast, whether it's placing TV spots with NBCUniversal or providing benefits to employees.

The fund was an earlier investor in ad-driven media companies Vox Media and Cheddar, but it's recently backed ones with a subscription component like sports media company The Athletic and audio app TuneIn.

Its leadership shared three themes and related companies they're excited about heading into 2020.

1. Audio with diverse business models

Amazon and Google, with their smart speakers, are driving the growth of the audio ecosystem. In turn, platforms like Spotify and Pandora are gaining new audiences and responding with new kinds of content formats and business models.

Amy Banse, managing director and head of funds, is bullish on audio's chances of getting people to pay for it, now that they've been primed to trained to pay for video and other online content.

Comcast Ventures is an investor in TuneIn, an online radio streaming service that was early in putting audio content behind a paywall.

"People have been trained to pay for video, and I think they'll pay for audio content as well," Banse said.

2. Gaming takes off

Gaming is having a resurgence, with the popularity of Fortnite and launch of Google's Stadia, and accordingly, attracting investor interest.

Andrew Cleland, managing director at Comcast Ventures, sees 2020 as a big year for gaming shifting from packaged to streaming led by the likes of Stadia. He also sees a lot of new gaming startups driven by the legalization of sports betting, which could drive interest from land-based players like casinos that have big in-person audiences but lack digital chops.

Cleland is betting on FanDuel, as well as other Comcast Ventures investments Players Lounge, Kite and Lightning, Upcomer, and Ready Games.

3. Influencers develop products of their own

Marketers have long paid online personalities to promote their products to their followings. Now influencers are starting to develop their own successful product lines. Look no further than Kylie Jenner, who just sold a $600 million stake in her makeup business to Coty.

Sam Landman, managing director, thinks that's just the beginning and that we're on the cusp of seeing more business breakouts from other such mega influencers like Ryan Kaji of Ryan's Toy Review and Casey Neistat, to name a couple.

"You see influencers becoming wiser," said Landman, who was on the board of influencer businesses Fullscreen (sold to AT&T) and WhoSay (sold to Viacom). "With good management and business savvy, you'll see more of these stories. Merchandise was stop one, toys were stop two. You'll see people get to even bigger businesses. Casey Neistat, it doesn't seem crazy to me that he could have a debit card one day."