Bill Simmons’ podcast is coming back next week. Here’s what we know.
We’ve known for nearly a month now that Bill Simmons will relaunch his podcast next week. Last seen on Grantland and ESPN, the man who first made his name as the “Boston Sports Guy’’ revealed a few more details about his return Tuesday.
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The podcast will include a “new name’’ and “new sponsors,’’ Simmons tweeted in August.
Since the beginning of the NFL season, Simmons has teased that his Oct 1. return will include at least one “Guess the Lines’’ podcast with Jimmy Kimmel Live’s Sal Iacano, known best as Cousin Sal, for the NFL’s Week 4, a tradition in which the two try to guess the gambling lines of the week’s upcoming football games.
In the podcast’s absence this fall, Simmons has been posting their guesses (as well as game picks, traditionally part of his old Friday NFL columns) on his Instagram account.
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Since ESPN decided not to renew his contract in May after 15 years, Simmons signed a deal with HBO to host a weekly talk show beginning in 2016 and produce video podcasts and documentaries for the network. His HBO deal also begins Oct. 1.
According to James Andrew Miller, co-author of the definitive history of ESPN, a starting point of the deal was that Simmons “will be able to say whatever he wants.’’ That wasn’t quite the case at ESPN.
However, as Sports Illustrated’s Richard Deitsch pointed out, Simmons has not announced a home for his online writing or audio podcasts.
According to Re/code, Simmons’ B.S. Report was downloaded 32 million times and Grantland Network podcasts were downloaded 19 million times. At the time of Simmons’ departure from ESPN, the B.S. Report was reportedly second on iTunes’ sports and entertainment charts, while his short-lived basketball-only podcast, Bill Don’t Lie, was third.
Simmons returns to a podcast world very different — and much more saturated — than when he first launched the B.S. Report in 2007.
But that probably won’t matter. As Deadspin’s Kevin Draper wrote in May:
The mechanics of podcast listening—you have to seek out and actively subscribe—favor those, like Simmons, who are better at building devoted audiences than entertaining large fleeting ones. This means most B.S. Report listeners are frequent ones.
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Bill Simmons has been podcasting longer than almost any other major media figure…and is genuinely very good at it.
One thing we can bet on: Next week’s return will likely include free-flowing conversations that occasionally touch on mature subjects.
Other notable ESPN departures
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