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“Very interesting that The Ringer’s writers write on Substack and not…The Ringer.” “What’s the point of the website then?” “Hold up. You’re telling me The Ringer would rather make money on writing than not make money on writing?”
These were some of the responses after The Ringer’s Zach Lowe announced his new newsletter. The Lowe Post, which covers the NBA, joins The Ringer’s Sean Fennessey, Tom Pelissero, and Bryan Curtis on Substack. (The Lowe Post is $10 a month, and has already become one of Substack’s bestselling sports newsletters. Fennessey’s newsletter is $5 a month; Pelissero’s is $8 a month, and Curtis’s is free.)
Though podcasting has been his main gig for a while now, Zach Lowe is one of the best sports writers in the country — witty, warm-hearted, and a true lover of basketball and the Mets. In his inaugural newsletter, he wrote about how he feels his sports analysis loses a step when he’s only talking, not writing.
On the one hand, of course Lowe should have a newsletter. But his Substack, and those of his colleagues, are not independent side hustles. Each has Spotify and The Ringer branding.
As a digital media business, The Ringer has always been flexible and opportunistic. It was initially published on Medium when it launched in 2016. The publication moved to an ad and tech partnership with Vox in 2017. It was acquired by Spotify for $250 million in 2020 and, five years later, signed a distribution deal with Netflix to bring some of its video podcasts (including The Bill Simmons Show, The Zach Lowe Show, and The Rewatchables) to the platform. The website has always been free to read.
The Ringer declined to comment on its Substack strategy and would not tell me whether the writers receive a share of subscription revenue. (The lack of comment has garnered its own press coverage.) Though The Ringer has referred to the new newsletters as being in “partnership” with Substack, there’s no separate financial relationship between the two companies, Substack confirmed to me.
If you find this a little confusing, you’re not wrong. The Substack-Ringer whatever-this-is is a confusing move that is raising a lot of very 2026 questions. Here are some things I’m wondering.
Why is The Ringer giving up on its own website?
While Grantland — the beloved sports writing site created by Ringer founder Bill Simmons in 2011 and shuttered by ESPN in 2015 — was known for its long-form journalism, The Ringer is all-in on podcasts. Simmons jokes on nearly every episode of his own show that his “fingers stopped working” years ago and that his days writing columns are behind him.
Today, most of the links on The Ringer’s homepage will bring you somewhere else. The homepage’s function is closer to a landing page or linktree than a news website. Many links redirect to Spotify, where listeners can watch or listen to Ringer podcasts. Now, with the newsletter launches, several links whisk you off The Ringer and over to Substack.
Burned by Facebook and forever-shifting algorithmic winds, many publishers have focused on building on their own channels in recent years. The theory is that direct-to-reader news products like newsletters, apps, and events will help publishers control audience connections and insulate them from inevitable platform pivots.
But though Substack was once synonymous with independent writers, its perks are luring more and more established publications onto the platform. Some, like The Ringer, are sharing Substack-exclusive content. Others, like New York magazine and The Wall Street Journal, are redistributing work that exists elsewhere on the internet.
One major pull? Substack has morphed into a full-on social media platform, albeit one where publishers can directly monetize and capture email addresses for themselves.
In the past six months, the app has generated nearly 800,000 paid subscriptions, according to Substack, and more than half of those subscriptions came directly from its Twitter-like Notes feed. Network effects account for more than half of all subscriptions on the platform and about 30% of paid subscriptions, a spokesperson said.
Substack offers publishers another major perk: little friction when signing up or converting to a paid subscription. I subscribed to The Lowe Post with a single click. I didn’t have to fill out my credit card info or even my email address — since I’m a paying subscriber to other Substacks, it was a seamless transaction.
Media journalist Simon Owens has been tracking the rise of traditional media outlets on Substack (on Substack, naturally).
“I’d compare The Ringer’s strategy to publishers producing native content for YouTube,” Owens said. “The company recognizes that Substack has its own audience ecosystem, and it may be easier to convert users into subscribers directly on the platform than to convince them to visit The Ringer’s website.”
“What’s more, these payments are facilitated through The Ringer’s own Stripe account, so in the worst case scenario it could easily move its subscribers over to its website if it decides to abandon Substack,” he added. “So I think there’s little downside.”
Is this a bad omen for the open web?
“Open web” is an ill-defined concept. Sometimes people use it to mean the public portion of the internet that’s indexable by search engines. Others mean, basically, websites — anything you can reach on a web browser at a URL. Whatever the semantics, people have been shoveling dirt on “the open web” for years. (This New York Times obituary noting the rise of paywalls, apps, and tiers of access was published back in 2010.) But the death notices have picked up with the rise of AI.
Google Search referrals to publisher websites are down 40.2% year over year, according to Chartbeat. And AI chatbots are not sending users to news sites. Referrals from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and the like were just 0.01% of traffic to publishers and declining, Chartbeat found.
Even before it was acquired by Spotify, The Ringer’s primary business was podcasts, so it’s never been as reliant on search as text-first publishers. The Ringer can afford to deprioritize its website more than most. But all kinds of publishers are having to respond to a real shift in the way people consume news and content.
What does this mean for other publishers?
Kendall Baker, senior writer and head of newsletters for Yahoo Sports, knows a thing or two about email newsletters. He says The Ringer’s move exemplifies a news consumption trend that’s only picking up speed.
“Most people’s general way of finding information or consuming information online is that they’re opening their phone and going straight to a social media app and starting to scroll,” Baker said.
Another app that most U.S. adults open up every day? Their email.
“If I want an engaged audience on a daily basis, relying on them coming to find me versus going to them would be silly — and it’s becoming more and more silly,” he said. “I think that’s partially what’s driving this. Newsletters are an obvious solution there.”
The Ringer’s move is also a bet on the strength of individual personalities. Substack doesn’t (yet) offer bundles, so a reader who wants all of The Ringer’s paid Substack content will have to fork over something like $23/month — more than a subscription to New York magazine or Apple News and a little less than a full New York Times bundle. Even with the strong parasocial relationships The Ringer enjoys — enough to fuel many, many subreddits — the pricing was a common complaint online.
Many publishers will not want to cannibalize pricier subscriptions by selling access to a single popular writer. Offering a whole-site subscription also lets readers discover (and hopefully fall in love with!) more of your content.
“It seems in the Substack era, you’re writing for people who really like you,” Simmons said on a recent podcast about sportswriting. “And you’re getting that audience but then, how do you pull other people in? That’s going to be the big question over the next five to 10 years.”
“Obviously we have a lot of writing on The Ringer dot com that we’re very proud of,” Simmons added, pointing to a NFL Take-O-Meter piece by The Ringer’s Austin Gayle. “But will it ever be like 2011 again? I don’t know.”
“You mean, when we launched Grantland?” The Ringer’s Bryan Curtis asked.
“No, just that era. How many writers were coming up — the energy behind it, and all the different styles,” Simmons said. “I wonder if we’ll ever have that many writers again trying that many different things.”
