ESPN’s Bill Simmons in a Q&A with RE/CODE's Peter Kafka said of recording podcasts for the Grantland website, "The fact that we don’t have a sponsored studio yet is just perplexing to me." Simmons added, "We shoot like 15 hours of TV in there. But I also don’t know anything about ad sales, and it’s probably a much more complicated landscape than I’m giving it credit for. But to me, that’s a no-brainer." He also addressed his expiring contract and what could be next on his radar, among other topics. Below are excerpts from the interview:
Q: Do you think you could go off by yourself, or some place other than ESPN, and recreate all of this?
Simmons: Grantland has been the most important thing I’ve done now for five years. Everything I’ve done for the last five years has been geared toward the site. I think it’s a business. The frustrating thing is you have to keep growing to have a business. You can’t just say “Okay -- we’re good, after three years -- we don’t need more people." I just think Grantland’s at a crucial point now where we’re doing the site that we have now really, really well. And that’s been the case now for about 14 months. So now the question is, what does that mean to ESPN? I don’t know. I don’t know that it’s a me decision -- it’s what does ESPN want from this site? Because if they just want it to [stay] the same, it’s going to stagnate a little bit.
Q: It sounds like you’re asking ESPN to give you more resources.
Simmons: I’m not doing anything. I haven’t asked for anything. ... That’s a decision that has to come from them. They just have to think about what the goals of the company are. The reality is they make billions of dollars with TV rights. It’s always good to dabble in different things. But sometimes when you dabble in different things, they turn into something. I think you have a responsibility at that point to decide “Alright -- something happened here. This is a really good thing. Now what do we do?” That’s not my decision.
Q: But you’ve made some suggestions, presumably, to [ESPN President] John Skipper and those folks.
Simmons: No, I haven’t, actually. I haven’t had a lot of contact with those people since last September.
Q: That was the Goodell thing. Does that experience influence your decision?
Simmons: I don’t know. What I care about is the people I work with. Those are the people who know how much time we’ve put into everything. And we’ve never had … we’ve always been understaffed, always. ... At some point you want to have the right number of people, you want to start adding verticals and certain things. And if you’re not prepared to do that, I don’t know what’s left. So that conversation has to happen first. And then you have to have a conversation afterward about me, and what I want to do (RECODE.net, 3/15).
