Netflix is applying the value proposition of the early 1940s—“what if you could see your favorite radio programs?”—to the peak podcast era, inking a deal with Spotify that will bring more than a dozen shows from Bill Simmons’ The Ringer universe into the streaming fold.
Among the content coming to Netflix beginning early next year will be The Bill Simmons Podcast, the cinema-nerd gabfest The Rewatchables and The Ringer Fantasy Football Show. Simmons’ titular show is currently holding down the No. 2 spot on Spotify’s sports podcast chart, trailing only Barstool Sports’ Pardon My Take, while the three-mic fantasy football effort is holding steady at No. 7.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
While the volume of dollars in play remains murky, a source with knowledge of the negotiations said the new pact includes an element of exclusivity. As a result, some of the relevant Ringer shows, including Simmons’ eponymous pod, will no longer appear on Netflix’s streaming rival, YouTube. (While new episodes of TBSP will not be available on YouTube as of 2026, the contractual displacement won’t impact all 16 of the Ringer pods that are included in the deal.)
Netflix, which has invested heavily in sports through NFL, boxing and docuseries agreements, will gain access to Simmons’ substantial audience in the athletics genre. Simmons’ YouTube page reaches 241,000 subscribers and features over 1,600 videos. The June 3 episode of Simmons’ video pod has put up some of the biggest numbers for his YouTube channel in recent months, as 270,158 users thus far have tuned in to watch the host quash a beef with Meadowlark Media star (and Mark Cuban antagonist) Pablo Torre.
Since the year began, Simmons’ top draw on YouTube arrived courtesy of a Feb. 2 installment of TBSP in which he performed a postmortem on Luka Dončić’s midseason trade to the Lakers. That episode has been viewed more than 1 million times since it went live.
Simmons’ association with Netflix began more than a year ago, when he executive-produced a docuseries on the rise and fall of the WWE’s Vince McMahon for the streaming service. Mr. McMahon premiered on Sept. 25, 2024. Per Nielsen ratings data, the six-part series generated 908 million minutes of viewing time during its first five days in the wild, making it the week’s fourth-biggest Netflix draw.
Netflix began talking up its emerging interest in the podcasting space earlier this year. During the company’s first quarter earnings call in April, co-CEO Ted Sarandos told investors, “We’re constantly looking at all different types of content and content creators,” before adding, “The lines between podcast and talk shows are getting pretty blurry. We want to work with … great creators across all kinds of media that consumers love. And podcasts have become a lot more video-forward.”
Sarandos closed the loop on his podcast soliloquy by suggesting that the format would likely find a home on his streaming platform sometime in the near future. “As the popularity of video podcasts grow, I suspect you’ll see some of them find their way to Netflix,” he said.
The Ringer was founded by Simmons in 2016, about six months after ESPN announced it was pulling the plug on his long-form journalism site, Grantland. The decision to shut down the site was made subsequent to Simmons’ departure from the sports-media juggernaut, where he’d put in nearly 15 years.
The Ringer’s launch effectively coincided with his short-lived HBO talk show, Any Given Wednesday. While Simmons’ flirtation with premium cable was not a rousing success—through its first six installments the show averaged just under 250,000 viewers per week—he would go on to make a killing just a few years later when he sold The Ringer to Spotify for approximately $200 million.
Simmons reupped with Spotify this spring.
