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Four popular personalities employed by The Ringer—Sean Fennessey, Bryan Curtis, Zach Lowe, and Tom Pelissero—have launched newsletters hosted on Substack in recent weeks, fueling speculation about a formal partnership between the media outlet and subscription publishing network. However, Substack CEO Hamish McKenzie has clarified that no such relationship exists, financial or otherwise.
“We didn’t pay them anything and there’s no special deal,” McKenzie wrote on X Wednesday in a back-and-forth with Yahoo Finance reporter Hamza Shaban. “They’re launching these substacks because they think it’s a good idea. And I agree. It’s a very good idea to build a network of substacks. Networks are powerful.”
McKenzie is the first relevant party to publicly comment on the situation. All involved talent, as well as The Ringer and its parent company Spotify—which acquired the network in 2020—have been mum regarding the speculation that the two sides have a business arrangement.
The slew of splashy Substacks has also left many sports-media watchers wondering about the fate of The Ringer’s website and its broader editorial ambitions. Of the four letter-launchers, Curtis has the most recent Ringer byline—a February 2026 missive about the gutting of The Washington Post’s sports section. Neither Pelissero nor Lowe has written for The Ringer since being hired by the outlet in March 2025 and August 2026, respectively. Meanwhile, Fennessey’s last byline for the company came in 2021. NFL Draft analyst Todd McShay has been publishing his own newsletter on another platform, Beehiiv, since joining The Ringer in Oct. 2024.
Founded by former ESPN columnist and personality Bill Simmons in 2015, The Ringer originally focused primarily on writing, similar to his former ESPN vertical, Grantland. In recent years, however, the company has increasingly prioritized audio and video, including an agreement to license several of its podcasts exclusively to Netflix.
Though The Ringer employs two dozen staff writers, only a handful of articles are published on its site each day. And with four of the company’s most prominent personalities now publishing on an independent platform, it raises the question of why they aren’t writing for TheRinger.com instead.
The Ringer didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment from Front Office Sports.
While McKenzie asserts there’s no deal between Substack and The Ringer, the platform has had a distribution partnership in place with Spotify since early 2024. A Spotify logo also appears atop Curtis’s Substack, and subscribing to Fennessey’s newsletter results in a charge from Spotify.
Several sports properties regularly publish content on Substack, including NASCAR. The platform hired heads of sports partnerships for the US and UK markets in 2026.
