Basketball journalist Zach Lowe was ironing a suit for a TV appearance in a Los Angeles hotel two years ago when an ESPN manager read out a 30-second text over the phone about the end of his job. Today Lowe hosts a podcast at The Ringer, which is owned by Spotify and focuses on video podcasts, and yet he is returning to writing with a paid newsletter on Substack. His first piece since then came out on 12 October 2026 in the newsletter The Lowe Post, which is produced in cooperation with The Ringer and Substack, is meant to appear at least once a week and costs $10 a month.
“When I joined The Ringer/Spotify, we discussed building a newsletter to supplement my revived podcast. I tabled it for a year,” reads Lowe’s introductory post. The video version of his show The Zach Lowe Show is among the Ringer shows that Spotify designated under its deal with Netflix for Netflix’s US offering from the start of 2026.
The company whose shows are heading to Netflix began in 2016 as a website on the blogging platform Medium. Spotify announced its acquisition in February 2020. Spotify chief executive Daniel Ek told analysts at the time that they had bought the next ESPN.
In March 2026 Spotify laid off about 15 people from its podcast division. Among them was a pop culture writer who, by his own account, wrote the most articles in the site’s history.
The Ringer’s journalists on Substack
The day after Lowe’s launch, The Ringer’s homepage also linked to pieces by four of the company’s authors on Substack. The paid The Sweep had a dollar sign in brackets next to it. This newsletter about American football describes itself on its page as a Substack about the NFL from The Ringer and Spotify.
In the settings of Lowe’s paid newsletter on Substack, the author of the publication is listed as The Ringer’s editor-in-chief. He is listed in the same way on two other newsletters by the company’s authors, The Sweep and Now They Tell Us. Lowe and the two other authors have the role of administrator in the settings and are not listed as owners.
The Czech presenter Lucie Výborná has her own paid channel. After twenty years she left Czech Radio and in February 2026 launched a podcast on the Herohero platform. She also kept her Výborná show on Czech Television. Since September 2026 Televize Seznam has aired the talk show 7 pádů Honzy Dědka only as a fifty-minute cut. The full interviews remain on paid platforms.
Substack gathers subscribers and heads into video
Who owns the subscriber list of a paid newsletter and how subscription revenue is split is not stated in the introductory post or by Awful Announcing, an American website about sports media. On 13 October 2026 the newsletter’s page showed more than 14,000 subscribers, and a day later more than 17,000.
Unlike most social networks, Substack allows publishers to collect subscribers’ email addresses and convert their audience directly into paying subscribers, writes Simon Owens, author of a newsletter about media on Substack. Substack currently takes 10% of paid subscriptions, and Stripe charges payment fees on top.
Substack, where Lowe is returning to write, launched the Substack TV app in January 2026, in which subscribers watch authors’ video posts and livestreams on their television. The platform is investing in video and livestreaming to compete with YouTube and Patreon for both creators and viewers.
Among the creators on Substack there are, according to Bryan Curtis, a media journalist at The Ringer, many laid-off or driven-out reporters who send dispatches from professional afterlife. His free newsletter, however, is published by the company itself. “This Substack will complement The Zach Lowe Show, so that they merge into one larger content hub,” Lowe wrote in the same post that opens with the morning phone call from ESPN.
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