Simmons Speaks Out

A day after news broke that Spotify would pay Joe Rogan $100 million for exclusive rights to his podcast, Bill Simmons revealed in an interview with Vulture a bit more about the audio streaming giant’s sports plans. Spotify acquired Simmons’ The Ringer earlier this year for a reported $250 million. Simmons said AT&T and Bleacher Report also considered buying The Ringer. 

On News Cycles: In 2020, people are like, “What just happened? What’d you think?” And you have about 12 to 18 hours to jump on that before people start looking forward.

Media Consumption Saturation: Podcasts are competing against other things — hundreds of channels, streaming services … all this stuff cannibalizes each other.

And the other thing is just that there are more podcasts. More content, more people in the space. The products are better. You’re competing against more shows.

How Spotify views sports: They looked at us in two ways. One is, “Could we blow out The Ringer into something bigger with more resources?” Yes. And then, “How do we figure out sports?” It’s a nut they’ve been trying to crack for two years, but it’s hard to find the right team. I think they felt they had most of the right pieces in place, and the thing they were missing was that one person who had succeeded in this space and had gut instinct on what works.