ESPN Shuts Down Grantland Less Than Six Months After Split With Bill Simmons

The site will cease to operate “immediately,” ESPN announced Friday.

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ESPN on Friday announced that it is shutting down Grantland, the sports and culture website started by Bill Simmons in 2011.

"Effective immediately, we are suspending the publication of Grantland," the company said in a statement Friday at the same time staffers were informed of the news. Other writers announced that they had learned the news on Twitter.

Though the site will be suspended immediately, staffers' contracts with ESPN will remain in effect. Each staffer was to meet with ESPN brass Friday to discuss and negotiate contract obligations and their individual roles.

In May, it was announced that ESPN would not be renewing Simmons' contract, and Chris Connelly was appointed interim editor-in-chief. Simmons began a new role with HBO in October, and has hired away a number of former Grantlanders to join his project.

Other Grantland staffers, such as Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Wesley Morris and early hire Rembert Browne, have taken positions elsewhere. Personnel departures played a large role in ESPN's decision to shutter the beloved sports site.

Grantland featured a mix of sports and culture writing, often blended together into longform features that ran under Simmons. ESPN said there are still many spaces within the brand for longform and intelligent sportswriting, but culture topics — television, film, music — will not be a fit going forward.

Though ESPN runs two other sites aimed at audiences beyond sports — Nate Silver's 538 and The Undefeated, which focuses on the intersection of race and sports — the decision to shutter Grantland is not intended to reflect on how those sites will be run by ESPN.

Recently, ESPN laid off 350 employees, but waited to make an independent decision about Grantland instead of announcing the decisions all at once.

Throughout the six months of turbulence since Simmons left, the future of Grantland has loomed over the site and its employees.

On Twitter, Simmons called ESPN's treatment of Grantland employees "simply appalling."

The full ESPN statement is below:

After careful consideration, we have decided to direct our time and energy going forward to projects that we believe will have a broader and more significant impact across our enterprise.

Grantland distinguished itself with quality writing, smart ideas, original thinking and fun. We are grateful to those who made it so. Bill Simmons was passionately committed to the site and proved to be an outstanding editor with a real eye for talent. Thanks to all the other writers, editors and staff who worked very hard to create content with an identifiable sensibility and consistent intelligence and quality. We also extend our thanks to Chris Connelly who stepped in to help us maintain the site these past five months as he returns to his prior role.

Despite this change, the legacy of smart long-form sports story-telling and innovative short form video content will continue, finding a home on many of our other ESPN platforms.