Spotify 
The Ringer 
MUSIC BOX 
When Bill Simmons, the former ESPN columnist and Grantland editor-in-chief, signed a deal to produce a half-hour talk show with HBO, the story was mostly about what ESPN had let slip away. Simmons, with his jocular, off-the-cuff delivery, holds a special place in the heart of the thinking sports fan. To be exact, he's a fan’s fan, as comfortable rattling off statistics as he is settling into an impassioned defense of his favorite team.As a professional haver-of-opinions, Simmons was tremendously...
The Ringer
Bill
Simmons
Founder / Managing Director
Simmons got a promotion from Spotify — the company that bought his sports and pop-culture website network The Ringer in 2020 in a deal worth up to $196 million — charging him with growing the audio giant’s sports content outside the U.S. His influential “Bill Simmons Podcast” reached the 1,000th-episode mark this year after being named iHeartRadio’s best sports podcast in February. But perhaps his most significant move was the launch of two non-sports Ringer podcasts: “Just Like Us,” in which host Clare Malone looks back at the celebrity industrial complex of the 2000s, which brought the world Bennifer and Brangelina; and “The Town With Matthew Belloni,” an inside-baseball examination of the entertainment biz.
