What is PocketCasts maintaining?
1. A few kb of playlists and accounts 2. Probably a search service 3. Likely artwork caching
It's not free to run this.. but it's not exactly expensive either.
Many users pay and don't use the app very much. I am sure there are some super users who use a lot.
And most apps continue to sell, make enough income to fund a few devs and keep the services on. Even with a one time payment.
It's not like pocketcasts is paying the podcasters or producing content.
The problem is seeing every single dumb thing as some kind of mega-growth M&A deal when it's not. No, your podcast app won't make you hundreds of millions, sorry.