Yeah people on this site just really don't like the Ringer and Simmons.

Simmons has been stealing ideas from TZ for years.

The Ringer is unionizing and the dumbass head of Barstool made a tweet threatening his employees if they talked to a union rep.

What an idiot. Obvious play is to definitely talk to people on how to unionize and hope to get fired for a big lawsuit and $$$.

Even if you are a well known personality, it's absolutely no risk. Someone will scoop you up right away (maybe even The Ringer).

he's obviously not actually going to fire people but made a joke knowing people would lose their **** and get his name circulated everywhere

that's been the MO forever

no Im pretty sure he is absolutely willing to fire ppl for speaking the U word. and no he wont get in any trouble or lose a lawsuit.

also the majority of Barstool is 20-25 year old former interns who are now internet famous from being handed podcasts shows, and writing summaries of other people's tweets and youtube videos. I doubt they really care about unionizing.

barstool business model is to set the company up as a reality show and the people get hired because they are willing to play a part in the reality show not because they are good writers. 90% of the employees would never be able to get hired to write anywhere else and Portnoy knows that.

How come all these barstool people are famous? I am very active on twitter and sports and never come across their stuff. It is just lololds for me?

Barstool's core demo is like 14-28. They turn their employees, mainly interns straight out of college, into personalities. It is basically a co-ed fraternity that films their employees 24/7 for content.

I get Vox/Salon unionizing but Ringer seems closer to Buzzfeed/Barstool than those sites, most of those people are pretty replaceable.

Are any of the pods even that popular besides Simmons?

Seems like he basically subsidizes the rest of the site but doesn't care because he likes the cache of having his own site and being more culturally relevant.

Binge Mode and The Watch are both very popular/successful.

Their other NBA pods (mismatch, group chat etc) are bad IMO but still quite popular and regularly show up on most downloaded pod lists.

I think you'd be very surprised at the numbers they all do.

Why would they not unionize?

Ringer's podcasts do about 35 million downloads a month. They brought in around 15 million in ad sales last year. Simmons is def not subsidizing them.

Tuesday NBA Ringer show is awesome. KOC and Vernon have good chemistry. Very good show. Wish it had its own feed.

I'm truly amazed at the revenue and ears and eyeballs the Ringer brings in. So much of it is so so terrible. Outside of Binge Mode (Mallory Rubin was legit good for the GOT stuff and Concepcion is a not annoying sidekick) and the occasional Simmons pod I'm not sure how people listen to them. I guess ESPN podcasts do big numbers too so what do I know. The actual Ringer website is unreadable

I'm also pretty sure they're all nobodies without Simmons with maybe the exception of Mallory. It's also funny how their whole schtick is how they're all buddy buddy with Simmons and hes the lovable old dude wannabe millenial and they all kiss his ass and then they could potentially be in a labor dispute with him

The last wave of Ringer staff is pretty average, but the initial Grantland wave was quite amazing and many have moved on to do really good work.

Ringer either:

-works because of the “long tail” concept and is able to reach several niche markets because of internet, and appeals to enough small segments of people that combined it all adds up.

Or

-living in a podcast bubble that will collapse when advertising for simply safe and draft kings gets exhausted. I just can’t imagine how the website is making money.

Simmons gets credit from me for sticking with it after his show crashed, and at least giving a bunch of young people a chance to break in. That and basically throwing anything and everything pop culture at the wall and seeing what sticks. They had like the most popular GOT and Bachelor pods at the same time. That’s two pretty different audiences from what I can tell. One or two hits makes up for their terrible music stuff, over saturated basketball content etc.

Podcast advertising is not even close to a bubble. If anything it's under-utilised and inefficient, it can only get bigger and better.

e.g. the BS Pod is listened to by millions of people around the world and yet it advertises a sportsbook that is only available in New Jersey.

The only pods I've listened to that have used targeted ads for my specific country are some of the ESPN ones.

Yeah, I think podcasts need to utilize localized ads better. I remember I had a podcast that was giving me ASU and something within the city of Mesa and I was like this is the future. Podcasts just need a huge ad company to come in to compile all the small guy local ads that can be distributed based on IP and be worth more per download than the online sites that currently advertise.

The problem I see from the podcasts I listen to are the live reads. It’s tough to geo target live reads, and that’s what people are going to pay for. YouTube podcasts have the right formula right now.

Podcast ads are for people too dumb to hit the 30 sec forward button.

Deadspin Editor in Chief quit and blasted the new owners on the way out, sounds like it's going to **** over there

I hear Chris Connelly is available.

No one begins listening to a simmons pod until they've skipped to 4 minutes in and hear that stupid pearl jam song playing right?