Jemele Hill Is Mad There Isn't a Black Dave Portnoy or Bill Simmons | Bobby Burack

On Monday, Bill Simmons joked about those who doubted he'd succeed after leaving ESPN. "Everyone says, ‘Oh you can’t leave there! Oh no, can’t leave the Worldwide Leader! Whole life is gonna fall apart!’ Guess what, we’re fine." Simmons said with a grin, referencing selling The Ringer to Spotify for around $200 million in 2020.

The renewed interest in Simmons' entrepreneurial venture led social media users to a recent Bluesky skeet from former ESPN commentator Jemele Hill. It turns out, Jemele is specifically irked these days because a few white guys sold their sports media companies for a fortune.

"Bill Simmons was given over $100 million to create the Ringer from ESPN, and then he sold it and got several hundred million from Spotify," Hill bemoaned. "Do you have any idea who backs Barstool and how much money Portnoy has? Where is the equivalent of that for Black journalists?"

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As tech attorney Matt Bilinsky notes, "Jemelle Hill is really pissed no black person gets something that literally 2 out of the roughly 200 million white people America ever got."

He's right.

The industry is not just tossing around hundreds of millions of dollars for random talents to create sports media companies. Portnoy and Simmons are among the few. Clay Travis, who sold OutKick to Fox Corp. in 2021, is the other. That's three people. And they happened to create the three most successful independent sports media brands in the industry.

Those pesky facts. They always get in the way of a good race bait, don't they?

Also, Hill didn't bother to check her information. No one backed Portnoy when he started Barstool Sports. He founded the company as a small-town newspaper in 2003. After growing the paper into a blog and podcast network, Portnoy sold a stake to The Chernin Group in 2016 and Penn National Gaming in 2020—the latter for a reported $450 million.

Portnoy founded, grew, and sold Barstool himself. He bought the company back last year and now runs it independently, absent any corporate backing. Likewise, Travis owned OutKicK, without any backing, until he sold it.

Meanwhile, it's hard to imagine that Bill Simmons received "over $100 million" to start The Ringer in 2015, as Hill claims. Let's do the math: Simmons sold The Ringer for $200 million and reportedly collected around half of the sum himself. That would mean his investors, including HBO, profited not a dollar from the sale.

Hill's math isn't mathing.

Moreover, Simmons left ESPN with the most popular sports podcast in the industry. No one took a gamble on Simmons because he is white. They invested in him because his monetizable value to the podcast space was well-established.

Via Getty.

Hill is trying to incite racial backlash where it does not fit. There is nothing stopping a black talent from creating a sports media company from scratch (like Portnoy and Travis) or an industry-leading podcast (like Simmons).

Then again, Hill is not seeking an honest discussion about the economics of media. She proved that in 2022, when she dared her then-employer Spotify to invest the same amount of money in a black podcaster--any black podcaster--as it did Joe Rogan.

"What I would like to see is for them to hand $100 million to somebody who is Black," Hill told the New York Times.

Here's the problem: there is only one Joe Rogan. No other podcast host--black, white, trans, or gay--is as popular as Rogan. In return, he is paid more than any other podcast host.

Makes sense, no?

Ultimately, Jemele's gripe is that independent media generally operates more merit-based than legacy media. Networks like ESPN will pay Hill and Bomani Jones equally to those who are more successful to avoid potential racial backlash. By contrast, the market rewards talents based on their audience sizes. 

Hill can't stand that. The lack of DEI infuriates her. In her mind, people of color should earn the same as Rogan and Portnoy – even if they have much smaller audiences.

Furthermore, it's not as if popular minority podcasters have not been paid. They have. Hill neglected to mention her friend Dan Le Batard, who signed a $50 million deal with DraftKings in 2021 and is currently negotiating another. She also ignored the lucrative deals that Shannon Sharpe and Stephen A. Smith recently signed with iHeart Radio.

Speaking of Smith, he signed a $100 million deal with ESPN this month. Talk about "backing."

Even Jemele Hill has a new podcast deal. She just doesn't earn as much money as those whom she scorns because her show is less successful. For reference, her most recent YouTube video has just 1,500 views.

Put simply: if a black talent creates a nine-figure sports media business, they will be able to sell it for as much. They will join the list of three who have.

That said, we aren't as confident that if a white dude failed as many times as Jemele Hill has, there will still be millions of dollars waiting for him -- like there always seems to be for her.