Bill Simmons calls Prince Harry, Meghan Markle 'grifters' after their Spotify deal expired

Bill Simmons lashed out at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle for their relatively small amount of production after the couple and Spotify mutually agreed end their production deal early.

In a NSFW rant on "The Bill Simmons Podcast," the founder of The Ringer and former ESPN personality singled out the Duke and Duchess of Sussex for not living up to their end of a highly publicized deal with the streaming audio company.

Per The Guardian:

“I wish I had been involved in the ‘Meghan and Harry leave Spotify’ negotiation. ‘The F*****g Grifters.’ That’s the podcast we should have launched with them. I have got to get drunk one night and tell the story of the Zoom I had with Harry to try and help him with a podcast idea. It’s one of my best stories…F*** them. The grifters.”

Archewell, the company that the couple launched after giving up their duties with the Royal Family, set out to produce audio content for Spotify, among other projects for Netflix. Despite misgivings about how Spotify dealt with misinformation at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, they did produce some podcast episodes for "Archetypes." However, that show ended with just 12 episodes. 

As most media and tech companies, Spotify has been (pardon the pun) going through the ringer as of late. Although predictions of a recession have been made for well over a year, companies in those industries have laid off thousands of employees, canceled and declined to renew projects and allowed some high-profile deals to expire. 

Harry and Meghan were not the only ones to end their pacts with the firm as Barack and Michelle Obama also ended their production deal. In early June, Bloomberg reported Jemele Hill, formerly of ESPN, plans to exit the company as well. Hill's podcast group, called the "Unbothered Network," did not expand as desired, with Spotify only launching two more shows beyond her own program.

Simmons, who sold The Ringer to the streaming audio company three years ago, is also an executive. Neither he or The Ringer have been immune to issues over money at Spotify, as shown with contentions unionization efforts at his company throughout 2019 and 2020. However, a groundbreaking deal for the podcasting group was reached in 2021.