Has Bill Simmons really outgrown his relationship with ESPN, and is the Sports Guy ready to make a major move?
According to a Yahoo Sports report, Simmons isn’t happy with ESPN anymore. Nicholas Carlson spoke with a few industry execs to gauge their opinions on the matter. Several different circumstances could come into play on the matter.
Simmons’ contract is up next year.
He’s not cheap. ESPN is currently paying something like $3 million per year.
In response to a story that said Simmons and ESPN both wanted to renew, Simmons’ best friend tweeted:
“I’ve known Bill since we were 18 years old. That is the funniest thing anyone has ever written about him.”
A CEO at a digital media company with lots of sites catered toward men says that when news broke of Simmons’ suspension, people from CBS and FOX called him to ask if he would be competing with their bids for him.
In some quarters, there’s skepticism that Simmons is worth so much money. ESPN executives apparently gripe that Simmons’ pet project brands on the web — Grantland and FiveThirtyEight — aren’t doing very well.
One digital media CEO said Grantland writers were completely shielded from traffic data and that there was little pressure on them to attract new readers.
The people who run Turner/Bleacher Report assume that Simmons will end up staying at ESPN. “Nowhere else for him to go,” says a source close to the thinking over there.
Vox Media, which runs SB Nation, might be a natural fit for Simmons. Vox CEO Jim Bankoff has a habit of poaching stars and building sites around them (Josh Topolsky/The Verge and Ezra Klein/Vox).
“All I’ve heard is that he wants to go it alone,” says one digital media executive.
” I heard he might just want to go independent but get investment, promotion, sales, tech platform from a partner,” says another. If that’s true, the Medium rumor makes a lot of sense.
Could Simmons leave ESPN? It’s possible, but he does still have a full calendar year left on his contract. When he returns from his suspension, he’ll be returning to his own NBA television show centered around his Grantland project.
Simmons could leave, but there aren’t many other entities outside of ESPN who’ll allow a writer and personality that much leeway.