Bill Simmons has announced that he will support Grantland.com, the new ESPN-owned sports and pop culture site he’s editing. Sponsors include Unilever’s Klondike and Subway with three more clients, including a luxury auto brand, expected soon.
“I went on a lot of sales meetings. I mean, we have awesome ad sales guys, but I think it s different if you see the guy with the idea and he s in there in the room with you and you can see the look in his eyes,” says Simmons. “It’s just a different scenario than if someone secondhand had pitched it. From here on out, I want everything I do to be this hands on.”
Simmons, known by many as The Sports Guy, will be pushing a site that will focus on quality over quantity. It will also, it is worth noting, not have the standard traffic guarantees for sponsors.
“It’s the quantity over quality trap. Everyone s chasing page views and I m not sure that s always the way to go,” says Simmons. “We want to put up longer, more thought out stuff, because there s definitely an audience for that kind of writing. So the key element in being able to proceed with this thing was to get the sponsors onboard with the idea that we wouldn t throw up 60 items every day just to get traffic.”
“Speaking of the sponsorship model,” Simmons said, “I don t like this model where people don t get paid for the writing they do, because frankly, it s disingenuous to think you can get away that. If you want quality, you have to pay. And writers deserve to be able to make a living off their work.”
Source: AdWeek
