Spotify announced Wednesday it will buy sports media company The Ringer in an effort to bolster its booming podcast business.

The Sweden-based streaming giant will expand its podcast offerings with the more than 30 audio programs produced by The Ringer. The upstart company is helmed by sports expert and podcaster Bill Simmons, whom Spotify said it expects to hire along with The Ringer’s roughly 90 employees.

“The Ringer’s proven track record of creating distinctive cultural content as well as discovering and developing top tier talent will make them a formidable asset for Spotify,” Dawn Ostroff, Spotify’s chief content officer, said in a statement.

Spotify did not disclose the price of the deal, which is expected to close in the first quarter of this year. It comes as Spotify listeners flock to podcasts — more than 16 percent of its active users now engage with them, and the total number of hours streamed spiked nearly 200 percent in the fourth quarter of last year compared to a year prior, the company said.

But Spotify reported a net loss Wednesday of 209 million euros, or about $230 million, for the last three months of 2019 despite adding 23 million monthly active users. The company’s shares fell 4.7 percent, to $147.

The Ringer is the fourth podcast producer Spotify has purchased in the last year. It announced acquisitions of Gimlet Media and Anchor in February 2019, followed by Parcast in March.

Simmons launched The Ringer in 2016 after his stint leading Grantland, the acclaimed ESPN website that was shuttered in 2015. In addition to its website focusing on sports and pop culture, The Ringer produces its own videos and feature films such as HBO’s 2018 documentary on the late pro wrestler Andre the Giant.

“We spent the last few years building a world-class sports and pop culture multimedia digital company and believe Spotify can take us to another level,” Simmons said in a statement.