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Media

Derek Jeter sells sports site Players Tribune for undisclosed sum

By
Keith J. Kelly
Published Nov. 21, 2019
Updated Nov. 21, 2019, 2:11 p.m. ET

Derek Jeter has sold his Players Tribune sports blog site to Mental Floss owner Minute Media.

Terms were not disclosed. Jeter, the former New York Yankees shortstop who is on the Hall of Fame ballot this year, started the website in 2014 following his retirement as a way for sports stars to bypass traditional media and break news about themselves on the site.

He was very active in the early days, but insiders said he has spent virtually no time there since he partnered with Bruce Sherman in a $1.2 billion deal in August 2017 to purchase the Miami Marlins, where Jeter is now CEO.

In announcing the sale, Minute Media said the ex-Yankee would remain involved as a board member.

“When we led this category of athlete-driven stories five years ago, we couldn’t imagine The Players Tribune would transform the landscape the way it did,” Jeter said in an editorial posted on the site Thursday announcing the deal.

“Our goal at Minute Media is to strengthen the established brand position and accelerate the vision of becoming the world’s leading global athlete-driven platform,” said Minute Media CEO Asaf Peled. In March, Minute Media purchased another sports website, The Big Lead.

But drawing visitors in the era of Twitter and Instagram has proven a challenge.

Aside from a few mega-announcements from stars like Kobe Bryant and Kevin Durant, Players Tribune has struggled to attract traffic. It pulled in only 258,000 unique visitors in September, according to Comscore. Sources who reviewed the books said Players Tribune has been losing money since it started.

The company has raised $40 million in 2017 from IVP, New Enterprise Associates and Google’s venture capital arm, GV. At that time, it said it had raised about $60 million since its founding.

Early investors were said to include former Boston Red Sox slugger David “Big Papi” Ortiz; Durant, who this year jumped from Golden State to the Brooklyn Nets; retired NBA legend Bryant, and NFL quarterbacks Cam Newton and Russell Wilson.

Minute Media appears to have stronger financial footing, although is still in the money-raising mode. In June, it announced it raised $40 million in a funding round with new investors Hamilton Lane and Maor Investments, bringing its total raise to $120 million. The company’s existing investors include Battery Ventures, Goldman Sachs, ProSieben, Dawn Capital, Qumra Capital, Vintage Investment Partners and Gemini Israel Ventures.

There was no word on what will become of the estimated 70 employees currently at Players Tribune. The site had been without an editor in chief since former Details editor in chief Dan Peres left only a few months after joining earlier this year.