Vulture interviewed Bill Simmons on Wednesday, just one day after Spotify reached a $100 million deal to obtain the exclusive rights to The Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Earlier this year, the company acquired Simmons’s The Ringer for a reported $250 million.
“It’s a nut they’ve been trying to crack for two years, but it’s hard to find the right team,” Simmons said of Spotify’s plan for sports content and why the company saw value in The Ringer. “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.”
Simmons said that the opportunity to help crack said nut was part of what made joining Spotify so appealing to him.
“There were two big reasons I went to Spotify. One was that they were going to blow out The Ringer — make it bigger, all that stuff. But the second was, they wanted me to figure out their global sports strategy with [Spotify head of studios and video] Courtney Holt, who’s my boss and who reports to [Spotify chief content officer] Dawn Ostroff. That was one of the tasks that we had this first year, and that’s impossible to figure out when we don’t know when sports are coming back.”
The COVID-19 pandemic may have derailed the big picture a bit, but Simmons says The Ringer is in good position to succeed in the short term. He points to shows like The Rewatchables, Binge Mode, The Book of Basketball podcast, and The Watch as perfect shows for the moment – the type of content that doesn’t require an active sports calendar to thrive.
“That goes back to the Grantland days: We try to think outside of the box and get creative during dead spots on the calendar.”
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said that he felt like he was buying “the next ESPN” when the company closed on the deal with The Ringer. Simmons says that those expectations were what pushed Spotify over the top while he was also talking with AT&T and Bleacher Report.
He acknowledges that the path to the top is going to be an interesting one, because while pieces of many companies make up Spotify’s competition, Apple is the only one-to-one competitor in the podcasting space and Simmons is confident that Spotify is more focused on podcasting than Apple is.
When asked if he still has eyes for TV, Simmons notes that his first look deal is still in place at HBO. He is still open to new opportunities, but podcasting and the growth of The Ringer under the Spotify umbrella remain his priorities.
“I love doing my podcast. I love the creativity of it, the format. I don’t just mean that podcast. I love The Rewatchables. I love doing the Book of Basketball stuff. I love popping on other people’s pods.”
