PARTNERSHIPS | COMMUNITY | PODCAST | FRIENDS
Netflix Will Air The Bill Simmons Podcast Live
Streaming Simmons // Illustration by Kate Walker
Netflix will air a video version of the ultra-popular The Bill Simmons Podcast every Sunday to analyze the weekend’s NFL football games.
The Big Picture: Netflix is making a late push for podcast dominance as watching them increasingly becomes the preferred way for many people to tune in. Paying top dollar to license video podcasts is pennies on the dollar for a company accustomed to producing premium film and TV — and it gives the streamer plenty of lean-back content to keep users engaged.
Behind The Scenes: Netflix found an ingenious way to get football fans to fire up Netflix outside of their Christmas games.
The Bill Simmons Podcast will air every Sunday at 11:30 pm ET, following NBC’s Sunday Night Football, starting on January 11th. It’ll concurrently air on Spotify, where Bill Simmons is the Head of Talk Strategy.
For the remainder of the NFL season, Simmons will be joined by “Cousin” Sal Iacono for their Guess the Lines weekly series.
Simmons will expand his role on Netflix this spring, covering the NBA alongside Zach Lowe.
Closing Thoughts: Bill Simmons’ appearance on Netflix is part of a wide-ranging deal the streamer struck with Spotify Studios and Simmons’ media network, The Ringer (acquired by Spotify in 2020), which will bring several shows to the platform next year. It’s all part of Netflix’s recent deal blitz in the space, which has included exclusive video-podcast agreements with iHeartMedia and Barstool Sports.
The one place Simmons’ show won’t live is YouTube — Spotify’s archrival, and increasingly, Netflix’s too. Netflix maintains that YouTube is the only streaming platform that truly competes with it for users’ attention (at least, that’s the argument it’s making in its bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery), which helps explain why it’s aggressively building out its podcast, gaming, and creator content. Netflix wants to be in every category.
Next Episode: If video podcasts take off on Netflix, we may be looking at the future of linear talk shows.
PARTNERSHIPS | COMMUNITY | PODCAST | FRIENDS
Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Polled and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.