“What we really did with The Ringer, I think, is we bought the next ESPN,” said Spotify CEO Daniel Ek during the earnings call this morning, shortly after the company sent out word that it had officially acquired The Ringer, the distinctly podcast-heavy digital media company founded by former ESPN personality Bill Simmons.
It’s something of a cheeky statement, given the tumultuous circumstances that led Simmons to exit ESPN in 2015, but it’s also an indication of the specific opportunity governing the thinking behind the acquisition: In addition to picking up Simmons, one of the more concretely valuable talents in the podcast space, and a prolific podcast operation that’s already generating considerable revenue ($15 million in 2018, according to a Wall Street Journal report a year ago), Spotify is establishing a strong presence in the sports category — a media genre that’s incredibly valuable.
More on that in a bit, but first some detail. Rumors of this acquisition…
