Spotify’s ambitions to do more around sports content are no secret. Now it may be acting on them with a major acquisition, of sports-media firm The Ringer.
Founded in 2016 by sports journalist Bill Simmons, it covers pop culture as well as sports, and has a network of popular podcasts – the obvious appealing factor for an acquisition by Spotify – as well as a website and some video content. In its report on the acquisition rumour, Vox suggests that The Ringer was valued at around $100m last year, at a time when it was reportedly in acquisition talks with WarnerMedia.
Spotify’s push into podcasts, which has seen it make three acquisitions already, appears to be nudging valuations of other podcast networks and production studios up, so it may well have to pay more to buy The Ringer now. The latter company’s annual revenues were pegged at $15m last year in a Wall Street Journal report.
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