Sports information and commentary Deadspin has been offered once more — and its total employees has been laid off.

Deadspin, as soon as owned by Gawker Media, grew to become a part of G/O Media in 2019. In a memo to firm employees Monday, G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller introduced that Deadspin was offered to European agency Lineup Publishing.

With the sale, the 11-person employees of Deadspin was pink-slipped. “Deadspin’s new owners have made the decision to not carry over any of the site’s existing staff and instead build a new team more in line with their editorial vision for the brand,” Spanfeller wrote within the memo. “While the new owners plan to be reverential to Deadpin’s unique voice, they plan to take a different content approach regarding the site’s overall sports coverage. This unfortunately means that we will be parting ways with those impacted staff members, who were notified earlier today.”

Last fall, G/O Media shut down Jezebel after an unsuccessful try and promote the positioning. It was subsequently acquired by Atlanta-based Paste Magazine.

Per Spanfeller’s memo, Lineup Publishing “is a newly formed digital media company described in their words as ‘dedicated to creating, acquiring and managing high quality media brands across a variety of sectors.’” Spanfeller added, “I do want to make it clear that we were not actively shopping Deadspin. The rationale behind the decision to sell included a variety of important factors that include the buyer’s editorial plans for the brand, tough competition in the sports journalism sector, and a valuation that reflected a sizable premium from our original purchase price for the site.”

It’s not clear who’s behind Lineup Publishing or the place the corporate is predicated. The solely data on its website is a slogan that claims “Engaging brands. With heaps of character” alongside a contact kind. The backside of the homepage contains the textual content “San Gwann, Malta,” which suggests the corporate is predicated within the island nation situated within the Mediterranean Sea.

A G/O Media rep referred inquiries to a PR e-mail handle for Lineup Publishing, which went unanswered.

In 2019, Spanfeller and private-equity agency Great Hill Partners acquired Gizmodo Media Group (beforehand a part of Gawker Media) and The Onion from Univision to kind G/O Media.

That similar yr, Deadspin’s previous staff resigned en masse in protest of the new management’s demand that staffers write only about sports. Spanfeller then employed Jim Rich, former editor in chief of the New York Daily News, to run Deadspin. Rich was promoted to editorial director of G/O Media earlier than he exited in mid-2021 over his reported objection to “interference” by Spanfeller and different prime firm execs. In July 2023, Rich rejoined the corporate as Deadspin’s EIC.

G/O Media is “always actively reviewing our portfolio and operations to make sure we are prioritizing resources to best meet the needs of our readers and advertisers,” Spanfeller wrote within the March 11 memo to staff. “Although we are seeing some improvement so far this year on the advertising front, and I am cautiously optimistic this will continue, we are cognizant of the need to focus on the core sites we feel can best prosper in the current and future media business environment.”