Spotify has promoted The Ringer’s Bill Simmons to a new role as head of global sports strategy, reported Deadline. Simmons has worked under the streaming service’s umbrella since it bought his sports and culture podcast network The Ringer back in 2020. In his new role, we’ll likely see Simmons expand upon the current lineup of NBA, MLB and NFL-focused podcasts and dive into international territory. We’ve already gotten a hint of that with shows like The Rugby Pod with Andy Goode, Big Jim Hamilton and host Andy Rowe.Spotify’s non-US audience is getting larger — the service is currently available in 178 countries. Its number of subscribers actually grew by 2 million in the first quarter of 2022 (despite losing all of its Russian subscribers), which it pinned on "outperformance in Latin America and Europe". Last year, the streaming service expanded to 86 new countries, with the goal of eventually streaming to over 1 billion users. Earlier this year, Spotify announced it w
