Deadspin Suddenly Laid Off Its Entire Staff After Owner Sells the Site to a Startup G/O Media has owned the brand since 2019.
By Emily Rella
Opinions expressed by BIZ Experiences contributors are their own.
The once-beloved sports website Deadspin has laid off its entire staff after it was acquired by a European startup.
Deadspin's parent company G/O Media sold the sports site to Lineup Publishing on Monday, prompting G/O's CEO Jim Spanfeller to notify the company and its properties that Deadspin was shuttering and that no employees would be retained.
"I do want to make it clear that we were not actively shopping Deadspin," the memo read. "Deadspin's new owners have made the decision to not carry over any of the site's existing staff and instead build a new team more in line with their editorial vision for the brand."
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Lineup, which is based out of Malta, is a growing media company that is self-described as "dedicated to creating, acquiring, and managing high-quality media brands across a variety of sectors."
Financials of the acquisition were not disclosed, though Spanfeller cited "tough competition in the sports journalism section" and a "valuation that reflected a sizable premium from our original purchase price for the site" as reasons for accepting the offer.
"Although we are seeing some improvement so far this year on the advertising front, and I am cautiously optimistic this will continue, we are cognizant of the need to focus on the core sites we feel can best prosper in the current and future media business environment," Spanfeller wrote.
Roughly 12 employees were affected by the Deadspin shuttering.
This is not the first sale G/O Media has made in recent months.
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Last year, G/O sold Lifehacker to Ziff Davis in March, followed by the sale of the women-focused site Jezebel to Paste Magazine in November.
Deadspin was sold to G/O Media in 2019 with several other former Gawker brands.
G/O still retains ownership of nine other editorial properties including Gizmodo, The Onion, and Quartz.
