Bill Simmons: Good Luck With Your Life.
- Thread starter ifmanis5
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I doubt if Disney (ESPN) invested in forming Grantland without ensuring Simmons could not leave in a few years and compete with them. They might be limited in their ability to muzzle him if they fired him (though even then, I suspect they might be able to work around the CA law issue and restrict him to some degree), but there's zero chance he can just leave and start a competing site.
drleather2001 said:
Whitlock and Olbermann shit on them after they left too, but to a certain kind of media personality the power of ESPN's reach eventually becomes more enticing than the freedom to criticize them.
If he leaves ESPN he may vent briefly Billy-style about corporate bull-shit he had to deal with at the Mickey-Mouse network, but he may want to shelve the bad-boy/spoiled brat image, but stay with the outspoken voice of the common sports fan (who scores court-side/50 yard line seats whenever he wants). I wonder if TBS/TNT or Comcast-NBC Sports could use him as a content provider and give him his next platform.
From the Business Insider article, linked above:
If Simmons leaves and the writers are forced to get more clickbait-y, that is going to suck.
Oh no, the horror that Grantland isn't more like Bleacher Report. So what if it isn't profitable, can't ESPN swallow the expense?
If Simmons leaves and the writers are forced to get more clickbait-y, that is going to suck.
I continue to be amazed how Bill Simmons Spoiled Brat gets turned into Bill Simmons Freedom Fighter. Someone should buy him a pony.
So much hate for Bill Simmons. It's like people are forced to read his articles with one of those Clockwork Orange machines.
Let's say he actually leaves TWWL, what happens to his old columns? Will ESPN keep them in their archives or delete them? Would Bill be able to re-post them elsewhere?
All depends on what his contract says and how acrimonious the break-up is. My guess is that he'd have to start fresh, but could link to his old stuff in new columns (I.e., here's my running diary of last year's draft) as long as ESPN kept it live.ifmanis5 said:
Here are some numbers for Grantland and 538: http://www.businessinsider.com/grantland-and-fivethirtyeight-traffic-2014-10.
wade boggs chicken dinner said:
If anything that article inflates the audience for Grantland and 538. If you look at the amount of time the average visitor spends on those sites each month you can then calculate the average readership for each site at any given moment. I won't go into too much detail because those figures aren't really mine to post in a public forum, but I think the average SOSHer would be stunned to learn what the average minute readership of Grantland really is nationally given the hype around Simmons as the most popular and influential sportswriter of his or possibly any generation.
How are podcast subscriptions factored into that? Relative to Vox/Deadspin, Grantland ismuch more reliant on podcasts and their YouTube channel. Are those factored into the equation in any way?
Forbes with an interesting piece calling out the Business Insider article
http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelwolf/2014/10/06/why-business-insider-is-completely-wrong-about-bill-simmons/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelwolf/2014/10/06/why-business-insider-is-completely-wrong-about-bill-simmons/
I am shocked that SB Nation has almost three times the visitors as Grantland. It's been months since I visited that site.
Merkle's Boner said:
Perhaps they are counting all SBNation-affiliated sites (Over the Monster, Lookout Landing, etc.) as SBNation traffic?
Merkle's Boner said:
For Niners fans to comment on the Seahawks/Washington game last night, there were 1200+ comments on the game thread, on a game in which the Niners were not directly involved. That's just one example - when you include all the traffic from every individual team site on SB Nation, it's a very very busy website.
No, SB Nation is a separate entity. They have a central site and a ton of team-specific ones, as well as ones like Every Day Should Be Saturday and Progressive Boink. I like a lot of their writers and their football (especially college) and basketball coverage, don't really read it for baseball. The quality of the team-specific sites can vary pretty greatly.
SB Nation includes more than 300 individual team and league sites. (If you noticed the gigantic rebrand they did about 18mos ago, they specifically called that number out.)
Back of the envelope math, if SB Nation has 3 times the traffic of Grantland (4.5m), that's 13.5m a month. Spread over 300 sites though that's only 45K a month each, or 1500 a day for each site. Most sites have a daily comment thread that's basically just a "water cooler" thread for long-time users, so I'd guess it's many visitors' first stop every day. I'd also guess the biggest 50 or so sites (including the mothership homepage) drive the majority of traffic, so there's probably a long tail, but their model is to be as specific to each fan community as possible. It's almost not fair to compare them to Grantland.
Back of the envelope math, if SB Nation has 3 times the traffic of Grantland (4.5m), that's 13.5m a month. Spread over 300 sites though that's only 45K a month each, or 1500 a day for each site. Most sites have a daily comment thread that's basically just a "water cooler" thread for long-time users, so I'd guess it's many visitors' first stop every day. I'd also guess the biggest 50 or so sites (including the mothership homepage) drive the majority of traffic, so there's probably a long tail, but their model is to be as specific to each fan community as possible. It's almost not fair to compare them to Grantland.
SB Nation also has Breaking Madden, which is worth visiting alone: http://www.sbnation.com/breaking-madden
Merkle's Boner said:
I think there might be some overlooking of the idea that the collective "we" here is generally more interested in the type on longer-form, occasionally literature-like stuff on Grantland than the average ESPN fan might be. The demographic that starts fistfights over whether Skip or Stephen A. is "right" about Colin Kaepernick's "elite-ness" isn't going to give a damn about 90% of Grantland's content. It's like having a "dancers wearing clothes" area at a strip joint and being surprised that there are no customers.
RT @sbjsbd Bill Simmons reportedly wants to leave ESPN and “start his own company.”
https://twitter.com/sbjsbd/status/519898773020213248
https://twitter.com/sbjsbd/status/519898773020213248
He's under contract, though. ESPN won't let him walk so easily.
Bill is petulant and thin skinned so I have no doubt he would like to take his ball and go elsewhere after this episode so he he is free to say whatever he wants. Even if 95% of what he says is gambling mail bags and trade value rankings.
Bill is petulant and thin skinned so I have no doubt he would like to take his ball and go elsewhere after this episode so he he is free to say whatever he wants. Even if 95% of what he says is gambling mail bags and trade value rankings.
Merkle's Boner said:
Does Simmons "own a toothbrush?" An anonymous digital media CEO said that he does "not."
mpx42 said:
Huh. For some reason I had it in my head that SBNation was the main fan site (a la SOSH or USSmariner) for some SEC or Big 12 football team.
cromulence said:
Before dissing King in the other thread for editing out the middle of a Brady quote, I dug around in some journalistic ethics sites on quotation use. Parsing little bits of quotations like that rather than letting the quotation speak for itself was one of the case studies in what not to do.
How does Simmons leave ESPN after they just re-upped with the NBA for another 9 years?
Does he lower his TV profile to go to NBA TV or TNT, in addition to trying to start a new website?
Does he lower his TV profile to go to NBA TV or TNT, in addition to trying to start a new website?
SumnerH said:
SB Nation also boasts PFT Commenter, maybe the funniest person writing about sports these days. Here's his latest.
M
MentalDisabldLst
Guest
jschip1 said:
Solid work.
"Do you know why they call it AT&T stadium? Its because they havent had a good carrier in 15 years, they charge way too much, and no one ever gets receptions."
soxhop411 said:
Did you know that someone posted that very article not 14 posts above yours?
Okay, it was me.
But the real point I want to make. The exact quote from the article is: "People in tech and media believe Simmons wants to leave ESPN, where he reportedly makes more than $3 million a year."
On Twitter, that becomes "Simmons wants to leave ESPN."
Pretty amusing.
Talking about 538 not getting a lot of traffic in a non-presidential election year, I think that's a bit unfair. They will probably get as much traffic in 2016 as they'll get in 2013-2015 combined
But is that worth supporting for the 3 years that are not presidential, from a company standpoint?Infield Infidel said:
Without really understanding the economics of Simmons (or Nate) and what his $3MM gets ESPN, would it be fair to say he's a loss-leader?
He brings people in the store, they get some edgy Simmons, but they also spend lots of time on other commodity items, priced at strong margins?
He brings people in the store, they get some edgy Simmons, but they also spend lots of time on other commodity items, priced at strong margins?
Yeah the only reference for the world I can find is very weasel-wordy:CaptainLaddie said:
http://www.csmonitor.com/1994/1212/12131.html
Big, anyway. Forbes had the highest-grossing restaurant in the US from c. 2010 at $24 million (which is about 1/4 as much once you adjust for inflation). http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mfl45kkff/the-top-grossing-restaurants/
That's absolutely crazy, considering its in motherfucking Saugus. I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this.
That whole stretch had glorious, tacky fiberglass constructs (the cactus and cattle at the Hilltop, the tiki totem poles at the Kowloon, a replica leaning tower of Pisa at some italian joint, etc). I would've guessed it was like a kitschy Disney world for hungry Route 1 travellers, but the article you posted says that most of the patrons came from nearby.CaptainLaddie said:
From that:
I remember driving by it many times on my way up to Gloucester, and yeah. That whole area was nuts.
Was my favorite part about playing at Hockeytown. And by favorite I mean it was mildly better than the fact the lockers didn't lock and the side boards was concrete.
But at least my parents knew of it. And it was the location of some Simmons article about Ainge sucking IIRC. That's all I got.
But at least my parents knew of it. And it was the location of some Simmons article about Ainge sucking IIRC. That's all I got.