by The Editors on April 1, 2009
On March 19, 2009 when Sportnet and GrindTV announced that they were joining forces to create a super online sports company backed by Softbank Capital many wondered how long it would take the new company to realize efficiencies in the work force. The answer: about 10 days.
According to sources familiar with the situation more than 30 people were relieved of their duties at Sportnet yesterday, leaving the group with approximately 12 employees. Apparently, GrindTV co-founders Erik Hawkins and Greg Morrow are holding on to the individual site editors (which is good) and their own employees, as GrindTV staff reportedly did not experienced any cuts yesterday.
by The Editors on March 19, 2009
Casey Wasserman’s march to own a majority stake action sports media moved forward today as the founders of GrindTV announced that they were being rolled into Wasserman Media Groups’ Sportnet to form a new company owned by Wasserman’s Sportnet in partnership with Softbank Capital.
“By joining forces with Sportnet, we now have access to deep sport-specific communities on sites such as Wetsand.com, Motocross.com and Skateboard.com. We are committed to leveraging these complementary online properties to create the leading action sports media company for fans, marketers, and the industry,” said GrindTV’s CEO Erik Hawkins and COO Greg Morrow. . . . “The combination of GrindTV and Sportnet creates a clear market-leader in the exciting action sports segment,” said SoftBank Capital Managing Director Eric Hippeau. “We have been behind GrindTV from the very beginning, and its always exciting when a portfolio company takes flight.”
And then someday, when all the deals are done someone might actually discover a profitable revenue stream.
Follow the jump for the entire release.
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by The Editors on November 24, 2008
Many in the action sport media business have been asking what Wasserman Media Group was doing spending so much money on their Sportnet property. It appears someone inside the company asked the same question and answered by cutting 41 percent of the staff.
Twenty-eight of the group’s 68 employees were laid off late Friday, including Gabe Huerta, VP-product development, and a number of others from product development and support.
An email to Luke McDonough, the former president of Studio 411 was returned with the following message: As of November 21st 2008, Luke McDonough is no longer an employee at Wasserman Media Group/Sportnet.” And the recently launched Snowboarder.com has cut recently hired editor James Sullivan and is reportedly being run by a “project manager” at the company.
Some would say it was only a matter of time.
[Link: Paid Content]
by The Editors on April 16, 2012
Apparently, NBC Sports action arm Alli Sports has an unlimited tolerance for pushing flame retardant, mouse dissolving, caffeinated, carbonated high fructose corn syrup on the youth of the world as they’ve just announced that they have signing up for four more years of partnership with Pepsi Co. Along with this comes plans for a three venue annual tour: beach, city, mountain.
“The action sports landscape has grown and changed dramatically since we launched the Dew Tour in 2005. The multi-stop series format was what the industry wanted and needed then. The Dew Tour changed the industry forever, taking the sports to a whole new level. The new Dew Tour, which will include three major events across Beach, City and Mountain venues, represents what the athletes and industry want and need today,” said Wade Martin, President & CEO, Alli Sports. “We believe our partnership with Mountain Dew represents one of the most unique, integrated relationships between brand and property in all of sports. This partnership extension and the new approach we created for the Dew Tour together with Mountain Dew, the athletes and the industry, truly underscores that.”
The new tour will feature stops in Ocean City, Maryland; San Francisco, California; and Breckenridge, Colorado. For the official word, follow the jump. [click to continue…]
by The Editors on December 19, 2011
Thanks to a new deal between NBC Sports Group’s Alli and Red Bull Media House we’re all one step closer to our sponsored, logo’d, caffeinated Idiocracy future. The partnership will launch a series of advertainment on NBC’s new 24-hour sports network.
The Red Bull Signature Series will include the most progressive and innovative snowboarding, mountain biking, freestyle motocross, ice cross downhill, skiing and BMX events, showcased on custom courses from the inspiration of the athletes themselves. The series features some of Red Bull’s top events including X-Fighters, Supernatural, Crashed Ice, Dream Line, Rampage and Cold Rush and other third party action sports competitions (see below for details on shows). The Red Bull Signature Series kicks off on NBC with Crashed Ice on Saturday, January 21.
Just more sad proof that the future of mainstream action sports content is advertising. Luckily, this will all be on cable where no one will see it. Follow the jump for the official info. [click to continue…]
by The Editors on October 6, 2010
Source Interlink Media, the parent company of ASG (publishers of Surfing, Surfer, Snowboarder, and Skateboarder magazines) announced today that they have purchased Grind Networks including GrindTV.com, Newschoolers.com, Ridemonkey.com, 411vm.com, Wetsand.com, affiliate sales aggregation sites Snowboarder.com, Motocross.com, Skateboard.com, and entertainment site Stupidvideos.com.
“The addition of Grind Networks to our portfolio demonstrates our corporate strategic commitment to finding and investing in the right partners who have the vision to deliver targeted content, across multiple platforms, to our enthusiast consumers,” said Michael L. Sullivan, Chief Executive Officer of Source Interlink Companies, Inc. . . With this move, former Grind Networks CEO Erik Hawkins will oversee all digital sales and marketing efforts for the new group; President/COO Greg Morrow will direct all technical and digital product development aspects of the business. The two founded Grind Networks in 2005 after serving as executives at Yahoo!, CitySearch and Launch Media. Both will report directly to Norb Garrett, Senior Vice President and Group Publisher of SIM’s ASG.
Those who follow along will remember that many of these websites were purchased and/or created by Wasserman Media Group in something called Sportnet. That site was WMG’s last attempt to corner the market on digital action sports. When things turned out poorly there the sites were then rolled into GrindTV with money from Softbank Capital March 19, 2009.
It will be interesting to see what magic ASG’s Norb Garrett can work with these sites as none (aside from Newschoolers in ski and Ridemonkey in MTB) have yet to have gained any authentic traction with either advertisers or readers. And while the domains snowboarder.com, motocross.com, and skateboard.com obviously have potential, this whole deal seems like a rather complicated, expensive way to upgrade a couple URLs.
Follow the jump for the rest of the release.
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by The Editors on October 10, 2008
Wasserman Media Group is ramping up to launch another Sportnet.com site with Snowboarder.com. They apparently picked up former Future Snowboarding web editor James Sullivan and plan to open for business in the next couple weeks.
For a look at exactly what Wasserman is building click the Sportnet.com site and you’ll see that they are not fooling around in the online space. They’ve been busy lately building a pretty deep collection of online properties that are ripe for picking up online ad dollars in the future.
[Link: Snowboarder.com]
by The Editors on September 4, 2008
We came in ready to have a little laugh at Fuel TV‘s expense about having a media panel with no media people on it, but Fuel’s John Stouffer surprised us.
Sure, Fuel TV’s General Manager CJ Olivares was on the panel (as he is every year), but also upfront were several other action sports media people: TransWorld Business Publisher Rob Campbell, The Surfer Group Publisher Rick Irons, and Vans marketing guy Doug Palladini.
The stated point of the discussion was how the Internet is changing action sports media. With the exception of Palladini, however, all the panelists were from old media companies who happen to have websites. No one from any of the emerging online action sports media businesses like loopd, Seshn, Sportnet, Go211, or Bnqt were even represented on the panel. Add to the fact that Vans spends millions of dollars with the other three panelists and it ended up like little more than a one-sided scuffle about advertising.
One of most pointed comments came from the audience when Ransu Salovaara the CEO of online ad network Sportsyndicator.com said:
The readers have already abondonded the magazines. The people are already online but the industry is supporting the magazines. The marketing directors are about two years behind the rest of the world. . . . The magazines are not supported by readers anymore, they are supported by the industry.
As might be imagined the entire panel disagreed.
by The Editors on May 5, 2008
Chuck Menzel, the founder of Wetsand.com has sold the wave forecasting portion of his business to the Wasserman Media Group for an undisclosed sum, according to a Josh Hunter story on TransworldBusiness.com. He has, however, retained ownership of the Wetsand store front and commerce site.
It’s the creative side of it that we really wanted to maintain, and I’m still creatively in control of the site, as far as keeping it on track with content and credibility,” he says.
Menzel has been looking for buyers for his popular site for more than a year, and we’re guessing being a part of Sportnet (which also includes action sports sites: surfspot.com, motocross.com, 411vm.com, newschollers.com, skateboard.com and sk8site.com) is going to be a great fit. Especially, as surfspot.com continues to grow its traffic.
[Link: Transworld Business]
by The Editors on April 2, 2008
On February 15, 2008 Wasserman Media Group, LLC took over administrative control of the Skateboard.com domain and recently posted the following jump page on both its 411vm.com and Skateboard.com sites saying that the two sites will “soon be one.”
Skateboard.com was one of the first skateboarding sites on the web and was originally registered by Tum Yeto’s Tod Swank and partners on June 4, 1996. For a while it was a mailorder site and then slowly evolved into a content and user generated content site covering skateboarding. But it never gained all that much traction in either form.
Now, it is part of WMG’s Sportsnet.com family which also includes: motocross.com, surfspot.com, 411vm.com, freeskier site newschoolers.com, and the offical P Rod, Jereme Rogers and TK community sk8site.com. Follow the jump for the official press release.
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On March 19, 2009 when Sportnet and GrindTV announced that they were joining forces to create a super online sports company backed by Softbank Capital many wondered how long it would take the new company to realize efficiencies in the work force. The answer: about 10 days.
