Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
HBO is planning to release a documentary on Andre the Giant, according to Vanity Fair. Now, Simmons is part of HBO, which is looking to bring meaningful sports documentaries into the light at a greater emphasis than ESPN.
Simmons joined HBO in July on a new “multi-year, multi-platform agreement”, where it’s said he will create content that merges sports and pop culture.
On episode 19 of “The Bill Simmons Podcast” featuring Malcolm Gladwell, Simmons shared his thoughts on the Grantland shutdown, saying it was “frustrating” and left everyone “sad”.
“The staff was really scared for the future of the site. They were scared for where it was going”, Simmons continued.
While attempting to recruit Nate Silver for the network, Simmons said he told the editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight: “ESPN gets a bad rap”.
Simmons explained that at the time of the podcast he was mad about behind-the-scenes things (which he wouldn’t elaborate on), he was working hard, and was about to begin a six-hour taping session with Jalen Rose for National Basketball Association previews.
Simmons even said he used to laud ESPN as a great place to work when he was recruiting other creative types, such as Nate Silver, who later started his own site with ESPN. He said that he and his staff found out that ESPN declined to renew his contract over Twitter.
“The mistake I made, and the thing I feel really badly about is that I had all these people counting on me”, Simmons said. I mean, when I did that podcast with Goodell, we took stuff out of my podcast all the time. He said he didn’t review the show before it was posted. But, in hindsight, if he had listened to it, “I would’ve said, ‘You know what, I don’t think that’s worth it.’ I would have taken it out”.
Speaking at a conference last month, ESPN president John Skipper said it’s “completely wrong” to suggest that Simmons lost his job at ESPN over his comments about Goodell.
Simmons said that ESPN had concerns about Grantland’s profitability, and he acknowledged that the site “should have made a lot more money” than it did.
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Simmons acknowledges that he could have taken out the section on Goodell, but blames being overworked on not doing so.
