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Bill Simmons is leaving ESPN

I'm waiting for Simmons to go full FU mode, to borrow a Simmons term, and start his own pirate ship media site/podcast like Adam Carolla.
 
Its a shame he can't just walk away with Grantland. ESPN should loan him the money to buy it and sell it to him. It's probably dead without him.

He needed them to fund it originally. No one else would have taken that big of a risk. He didn't have the $$, but he had the connections to assemble the talent, which is pretty excellent, and the managerial skills to position people in roles in which they could succeed.

Surely there is someone else out there that will give him his voice and let him have control in exchange for a return on their investment. I think most of the Grantland people are either independent contractors/contributors or on short term contracts. If he wanted to, you have to think he could find the money for another site from SV funds and bring all his guys over.

The worst part of all of this is the podcast fallout. Between Simmons and Bret Easton Ellis putting his podcast behind a paywall, its been a rough spring.
 
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It's pretty widely believed that Grantland is actually losing money. It has been a critical success but not a financial success which is probably what makes ESPN's decision to part ways with him easier. Without ESPN.com helping to drive traffic to the site it would be even worse so I wouldn't be so sure there is someone out there willing to give him the money to re-create Grantland under a new name. Simmons himself drives traffic and would be a profitable hire for pretty much anyone but re-creating Grantland is likely not going to be a profitable venture.
 
I dunno. Hard to believe that he couldn't put together a stripped down version that could turn a profit. Without the ESPN oversight it would probably be a lot more entertaining.
 
BBDeac said:
It's pretty widely believed that Grantland is actually losing money. It has been a critical success but not a financial success which is probably what makes ESPN's decision to part ways with him easier. Without ESPN.com helping to drive traffic to the site it would be even worse so I wouldn't be so sure there is someone out there willing to give him the money to re-create Grantland under a new name. Simmons himself drives traffic and would be a profitable hire for pretty much anyone but re-creating Grantland is likely not going to be a profitable venture.
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Im not an e-commerce expert, but this goodbye email from Simmons to staff says that in April they did 10MM unique views. That's a decent amount of PPC, I would think, certainly enough to support a decent staff and freelancers.

http://deadspin.com/bill-simmonss-goodbye-email-i-am-done-being-involved-1704773063
 
TheTwinAndreBen said:
Im not an e-commerce expert, but this goodbye email from Simmons to staff says that in April they did 10MM unique views. That's a decent amount of PPC, I would think, certainly enough to support a decent staff and freelancers.

http://deadspin.com/bill-simmonss-goodbye-email-i-am-done-being-involved-1704773063
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I wouldn't be shocked if Grantland is grossly overpaying most of the staff though and I can imagine Simmons driving that sort of overhead could have been part of his dismissal. If you're losing money with 10mm views per month then you're doing something wrong.
 
buckets said:
I wouldn't be shocked if Grantland is grossly overpaying most of the staff though and I can imagine Simmons driving that sort of overhead could have been part of his dismissal. If you're losing money with 10mm views per month then you're doing something wrong.
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They've been adding writers like crazy over the last year or two. I feel like Simmons, Lowe, Keri, Barnwell, and Morris deserve legit money and should almost be enough to field a legit site's roster. Grantland has so many secondary and tertiary writers that it feels bloated and unnecessary.
 
buckets said:
I wouldn't be shocked if Grantland is grossly overpaying most of the staff though and I can imagine Simmons driving that sort of overhead could have been part of his dismissal. If you're losing money with 10mm views per month then you're doing something wrong.
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they don't advertise much on their site looks like, not sure where the money is coming from. views on their own aren't worth anything.
 
BillBrasky said:
Because who wants to go sit behind some 89 year old woman mailing a bunch of packages at the post office?
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Why would someone sit behind someone else at the post office?*

*I haven't seen the commercial, so perhaps that explains my question. Or perhaps Brasky is being bad at English again.
 
*stand

My bad OGB

It's the cold advertisement opening Simmons does before every BS Report.
 
Grantland.com just always seemed like a halo project - designed to get critical prestige and burnish espn's credentials and they didn't really care if they lost a bit of cash for that.
 
I bet the #hottakes were flowing at the Four Seasons last night. Didn't realize Bleacher Report was Turner. That makes sense. I'm torn on putting Simmons on Inside the NBA.
 
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