Spotify Sale Mints The Ringer’s Bill Simmons As Podcasting’s First Big-Money Superstar

When Forbes published its list of the highest-paid podcasters in January, The Ringer founder Bill Simmons sneaked on at No. 5, with an estimated $7 million earned from his hit program, The Bill Simmons Podcast. A month later, Spotify flipped the script, lavishing Simmons and his sports-talk empire with an A-list sized check that landed the podcasting entrepreneur at No. 13 on this year’s Celebrity 100 with pretax income of $82.5 million.

Simmons became the first podcaster to make the ranking, which looks at all income streams celebrities earn from their performances and any spinoff businesses, after Spotify paid north of $200 for The Ringer, which includes a roster of 39 podcasts, a sports news website and a film unit that produced the HBO documentary Andre the Giant.

Simmons makes the list based on Spotify’s initial payment of $155 million and an estimated 51% ownership of the business. There is a chance he collected even more, since the only publicly-disclosed investor is HBO, which has a stake believed to be as high as 20%, and Forbes calculated the payday on the lowest percentage needed for Simmons to retain a majority.

Simmons made the deal right before the pandemic, when the industry began to slump and ad revenue plummeted across all media. Very few podcasts sit behind a paywall, leaving them dependent almost entirely by commercials, including, including The Ringer’s, with even the top shows losing as much as 15% of that income, according to one industry expert. Another major source of revenue ⁠— live shows that draw audiences of thousands ⁠— are also on hold until further notice. 

Adding to the downturn is a decline in downloads during the pandemic, even with listeners stuck at home with hours to fill. Analytics firm Podtrac reports that the number of podcast downloads during those peak hours has decreased by 11% since the beginning of March, attributing the fall to the fall in commuting, when most episodes are consumed. Spotify reported in April that it expects advertising revenue to decline, but it also has a cushion others don’t, with subscriptions totaling almost $1.9 billion last quarter, more than 10 times what it made in advertising. 

CEO Danile Ek told investors during an April earnings call that the true value of podcasts for the company is in engaging users and driving them to listen to more music, the driver behind more than $700 million in licensing deals and podcast-related acquisitions he’s made in the past 16 months. Last month he signed a deal with the No. 1 name on the Forbes 2019 top podcaster ranking, Joe Rogan, with an exclusive multi-year deal that the Wall Street Journal reported is worth more than $100 million. Rogan, who moves to Spotify in September, was just shy of making the list, but his new deal guarantees he will be a mainstay on the list for years to come.

Look for more. Amazon

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’s Audible is now reportedly building its own stable of podcasts from stars like Tiffany Haddish and Kevin Hart, who appears at number 84 on this year’s Celebrity 100. After years of letting podcasts sit on its platform without actually monetizing them, Apple

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is getting in on the action too.