There’s a long and notable sports history with online outlet Uproxx. Founded as a blog network in 2008, the company would go on to acquire early prominent sports blogs including With Leather and Kissing Suzy Kolber, and they made a particularly big splash in 2015 when they picked up DIME magazine. In the last decade-plus, they’ve also established Uproxx Sports as a notable vertical covering everything sports, with that fitting alongside their significant offerings in TV, movie, and music criticism.
But the Warner Music Group-owned site has reportedly been for sale for some time. And WMG announced group-wide cuts of 600 people last month (amidst their “biggest quarter ever“) ahead of a potential sale. And on Thursday, several Uproxx staffers posted that the sale had happened, and that they had been let go. On the sports side, that included Martin Rickman (editorial and creative director of Uproxx Sports and DIME):
wasn’t going to say until my last day but since it’s out there i also will no longer be with uproxx or dime
couldn’t be more proud of our team & the commitment to quality + context + empathy against seemingly impossible odds
ready to take what i learned and help whomever i can
— martin rickman (@martinrickman) March 21, 2024
Rickman had been at Uproxx since January 2016, starting as managing editor of DIME and then moving to managing editor of Uproxx Sports overall in April 2017. He played a key role in building out both of those brands, and in working with a variety of other Uproxx figures on pieces touching multiple areas. One recent one there was a feature on LSU women’s basketball star Hailey Van Lith:
It’s unclear yet how many other specific sports staffers are impacted. But several notable Uproxx entertainment writers and editors have posted about being let go, including Mike Ryan, Sloan Pecchia, and Matt Prigge. And that includes one entertainment writer who often crossed over into sports, Brian Grubb (or “Danger Guerrero” for old-time internet heads):
There’s a longer version of this coming in the next tweet but…
Today is my last day at Uproxx. The site was sold and things got shuffled around and I got shuffled out. It’s a bummer.
Not sure what my next step is but I promise I have been through worse.
— Brian Grubb (@briancgrubb) March 21, 2024
Grubb posted about this and his writing career to date at his Substack newsletter, and that’s well worth a read. One key part:
April 2 is my last official day at Uproxx but I’m going to cruise through from now until the end of the month with unused vacation days. The story is the same one you’ve heard 100 times. The site was sold a few weeks ago and some things got shuffled around in the sale and part of that shuffling resulted in me getting shuffled out. So I’ll just be over here watching basketball and eating junk food and basically behaving like a teenager who woke up and discovered he has a snow day for the next week or two. This is something I’m actually very good at. Maybe that can be my next job. If you know anyone who’s hiring for that, hit me up.
In tribute to Grubb’s since-2011 work at Uproxx as “editor-at-large,” let’s link a few of his pieces from the past year with notable sports ties:
Kansas City Chiefs Coach Andy Reid Is America’s Greatest Working Commercial Actor
The 2023 Philadelphia Phillies Are So Weird And Stupid That They Might Just Win It All
Every Sport Should Just Do A Slam Dunk Contest And A Home Run Derby
A Long Overdue Tribute To The Silly And Perfect Basketball Scene From ‘Bad Boys’
The Rundown: ‘Always Sunny’ And Chase Utley Paid Off A Joke Almost 15 Years In The Making
Those are all from a man whose primary job wasn’t to cover sports. But his primary job also wasn’t to cover heists, and yet, he became so known for his attention to heists that every strange heist was instantly set to him, commented on with Pierce Brosnan GIFs, and then used in his weekly rundown. Anyway, Alan Sepinwall (the famed TV critic, and Grubb’s former podcast partner) summed this decision up well:
Anyone who can't run a successful website with Brian Grubb writing for it should get out of the website-running business. https://t.co/sF1EfhS5g0
— Alan Sepinwall (@sepinwall) March 21, 2024
The larger impact here on Uproxx, and on their sports coverage in particular, is yet to be seen. While the posts on these layoffs have referenced a sale, it doesn’t yet appear to be publicly reported who the company has been sold to and what they intend to do with it.
And there are several prominent people at Uproxx in sports and beyond who have not yet posted about being laid off, so the company may well continue as a notable sports destination. (But it also may not; we’ve certainly seen plenty of recent cases of sites sold off and turned into anything but a notable destination). In any case, losing people like Rickman, a key player in molding Uproxx’s sports coverage, and Grubb, one of the brand’s most notable writers overall, doesn’t appear to bode well for the site.
[Martin Rickman and Brian Grubb on Twitter/X]
