If this means Dyestat is shutting down, it is a sad day for the running community. Below is an excerpt from USA Today with the article linked below it.
"ESPN is closing its high school business unit, reports SportsBusiness Daily, which includes its ESPNHS.com website, two magazines and its event management service, which staged all-star events and high school games at Disney World. With the closing in mid-September, about 75 staffers will lose their jobs."
Who could have seen this coming?
Everyone?
What it probably means is that Dyestat will go back to being independent of ESPN. It's been affiliated with different things over the years. It's probably a good thing actually.
say it aint so wrote:
If this means Dyestat is shutting down, it is a sad day for the running community.]
No, it was a sad day whenever Dyestat was sold to ESPN. This new Dyestat is garbage and didn't contribute much to the running community, so I could care less what happens to it.
The article says that they're shutting down ESPNHS.com, which is where Dyestat is now.
And it specifically said that girls HS basketball would be covered at another site, which would suggest that other sports are out of luck.
The USA Today article was a summary of this:
https://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Daily/Closing-Bell/2012/06/13/High-School-Sports.aspx
But that article's gated. Anyone have the web kung fu to get at the whole article?
ESPN is shutting down its high school business, a move that will result in nearly 75 people losing their jobs across the country. ESPN launched the division in '08 as a way to get into the high-school scene, but sources said that the business proved to be too locally focused and not broad enough. One-third of the group's employees were based in Torrance, Calif., one-third in Bristol and one-third scattered across the country.
As of mid-September, ESPN will close ESPNHS.com. Its two high school magazines – one for boys and one for girls – will not publish any more issues. ESPN Exec VP/Digital & Print Media John Kosner said, "By focusing our high school efforts around our televised game coverage and multiplatform recruiting content, we can serve the national interests of high school sports fans more effectively while continuing to provide robust content across ESPN media." As part of the move, ESPN no longer will organize its own high school events. But it still plans to cover high school sports.
This is really shocking news. And we sincerely are sad to hear it, feel for our respected colleagues, and anxiously await more details on the fate of the properties and content.
As a resident of Orlando, I also am very concerned about what this means for the track facility and cross country and track events that they put on out at Disney Wide World of Sports. And if this truly also includes my friends of many years who work in that department. Sounds like it does and those events will be canceled... including the XC meet in October. But I'm hoping not.
I've heard it will continue to exist without all the restrictions of being a part of ESPN HS. So maybe it will become good again.
Dyestat has evolved a great deal over the past bunch of years, going from a must-visit site to a shell of its former self. Hopefully ESPN allows John Dye and his crew to retain their URLs and push on as an independent venture. A push back to what they started as would be a good move, as the site had become incredibly watered down, with little reason to visit outside of leaderboards and links to results.
As for what Jason said, this gives you a unique opportunity to step in and try and provide an event opportunity for all of the athletes of your state. I know you already do so much, but where there is an opening means there is also an opportunity.
We can only pray that it goes back to the way it was before being influenced by ESPN
We can only pray that it doesn't disappear completely.
I'll stick to milesplit. To each his own I guess. Sucks for all those job losses though.
My understanding is that John Dye sold his site to ESPN for a pile of money. Now that they're shutting the whole thing down, is there anything to stop Dye from keeping all that money and doing it all over again?
Actually John sold the company years before that to Student Sports (around 2004). He continued on as an employee. Student Sports was then sold to ESPN in 2008, which (along with the purchase of Rise) started ESPN Rise which became ESPNHS.
Sounds like Trackshark all over again. Selling your website to a major company hasn't been working out too well within the track world... :(
Oh well. Tracktalk.net still operates as an extension of the old Dyestat, although it is nowhere near as popular as the old Stat was in its heyday. I completely understand why John Dye felt it was time to hang it up and sold Dyestat, but everyone knew this ESPN thing was going to be a failure from the beginning.
Good Rick wrote:
Oh well. Tracktalk.net still operates as an extension of the old Dyestat, although it is nowhere near as popular as the old Stat was in its heyday. I completely understand why John Dye felt it was time to hang it up and sold Dyestat, but everyone knew this ESPN thing was going to be a failure from the beginning.
tracktalk.net is not an extension of the old Dyestat. It operates as a separate entity. A mirror image of the old Dyestat Message Boards, it does not come close to what the old DS MB's did, in terms of numbers or content, in its heyday.
John was planning on retiring in December, and it currently working on reopening Dyestat again.
Dye will not die. It will be back. It will be better. It will not be run by a mouse ever again!
Dyestat stinks. Not a big loss. Someone will fill the void.
Come on Grote, Start it up again! Trackshark rocked!
I understand that tracktalk is completely separate from Dyestat, but its owners set it up with the intention of replicating the Stat. If Dyestat really is coming back, that's awesome, but John is going to have to work to appeal to an entirely new group of users. Most of the guys from the old Dyestat are at least in college, and many have quit running altogether.