Grantland closed / FiveThirtyEight Next Month

[daSwami]

That's sad. Grantland was by far my favorite sports writing site on the Web. (Not that I know of any similar sites.) I just pray ESPN keeps churning out 30 for 30s.

[AFM]

Don't worry Swami boy. Your main man AFM is here to provide all the in depth Wizards analysis you could possibly need. Just keep hitting that "+1" button to the right of my posts to keep me motivated!

[The Consiglieri]

ESPN's profits took a big dip. Instead of axeing Skip Bayless/Stephen A. Smith they close Grantland (already closed) and FiveThirtyEight (by end of the year).

Those are literally the only two ESPN properties I read. Strongly dislike ESPN. The cost cutting is largely due to their NBA bill (1.4 billion), and a declaration of getting out of "pop culture".

Too bad, hopefully Silver finds a new site. Really enjoyed it, ESPN bought the brand name and signed him as an employee. So it will have to be a new name/benefactor.

co-sign. Boggles the mind the garbage and hacks they've kept instead.

[gtn130]

I don't really think ESPN shut down Grantland because it was losing money -- they knew it would lose money all along. Grantland was a prestige project that was designed to do two things: cultivate brand equity among young intellectuals and corner that market so other media groups can't enter it in the future. It likely succeeded in doing those two things (or was on the right path).

They probably had a vague strategy in place to make Grantland profitable in the future, but that all goes out the window when Simmons leaves and his writers and editors follow him. ESPN isn't going to try to rebuild Grantland when they lost most of their key assets that made it a viable project in the first place.

538 straight up sucks and is only good for election coverage. They failed miserably at everything outside of that, and they were destined to be shut down.