Zach Lowe and K Goldsberry for Basketball. Barnwell, Mayes for Football. Andy Greenwald for TV. If Simmons can take all of them with him, Grantland will die.
I think VICE can throw around that sort of cash, or at least will have that potential if they can pick Simmons up. They're on the up and up. This could be amazing, I would love to see a serious competitor to the ESPN narrative.
Yup, VICE made $500 million revenue last year and took home $150 million in net profit. They're on track for $1 billion in revenue this year. They are an ever growing media giant, and already are discussing launching a 24 hour news network. They could become a massive rival to ESPN due to their potential ability to basically siphon off most under-35 sports fans. ESPN is an archaic operation, only reason they've yet to really gain any competitors is it takes very deep pockets, and a different approach. If anyone knows how to build themselves into a legitimate ESPN competitor, its them.
It's just hard to compete with ESPN given their built-in advantage in the market. They get paid both by the cable companies per subscriber and by advertising companies for TV commercials. And there is their strong presence on the web, too. Others have tried to compete with ESPN, talent have left ESPN, but the machine rolls on.
This would be a gigantic loss for ESPN. I can't think of any content they put out that's worth a damn that isn't related to Bill Simmons (Grantland & 30 for 30).
Bill Simmons is a borderline racist douche who cries when he doesn't get his way. I respect Zach Lowe & Jalen but Simmons offers nothing but NBA gossip and Celtic homerism. I have never taken him seriously and despise the fact Mike Wilbon was let go for this privileged SOB. Good riddance! Hopefully he takes Michelle Beadle with him
combining Woj and Simmons would be great, but after hearing that yahoo thought about firing Kelly Dwyer when the owner of the Cavs got upset over a Quicken Loans joke (that was totally justified) I'd worry that even Yahoo couldn't handle Simmons. I don't see why Simmons has to join another network. His name is big enough, why can't he just start his own? He could do whatever he wanted, not be censored, and stream his media to any platform he wants. He could write columns, do podcasts, tv shows, produce 30 by 30's and show all of it on his website/app/channel. I hope he takes Zach Lowe and Kirk Goldsberry with him for basketball's sake. He can leave Juliet Litman behind.
As long as ESPN has TV contracts with all the major sports leagues it isnt going anywhere. I would love for them to lose their web presence but thats all that can happen and its more than likely the least of their income.
Yeah but look into the future....what value does ESPN provide in a world where more and more people are dumping their cable and dish subscriptions for streaming options? ESPN is just middle manning all the advertising $$$ for themselves. At some point the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and whoever else will realize they could be keeping a much larger share of the pie. ESPN can't really distribute content online that easily (you have to input your cable package info to retrieve it). At some point in the future, ESPN will become useless when the sports leagues realize they can triple or quadruple their profits by merely cutting ESPN out all together. Without the NFL, NBA, or MLB, ESPN is nothing but a medium for showing Tennis, Badmitton, World Series of Poker and the WNBA. You need intriguing content to deliver to people. ESPN is actually extremely ripe to be picked apart right now if a company comes in and does it right. They're such an unbelievably archaic operation.
