The last five years have seen numerous waves of layoffs at Vox Media. Those have been felt particularly hard on the sports side, including with repeated cuts to SB Nation and at college football vertical Banner Society. And, following cuts earlier this year that included hits to news/politics site Vox.com and the overall Vox Media sales team, the company has now cut three positions at their sports video site Secret Base, including those of Kofie Yeboah and Steven Godfrey.
Awful Announcing obtained an email sent to employees from YuJung Kim, Vox Media’s group publisher for animal content site The Dodo and SB Nation:
Hi everyone,
I wanted to let you know that we have eliminated three roles on the Secret Base team. The affected employees have been notified.
These changes were not made lightly, and were necessary to put Secret Base on a path toward operating as a sustainable brand within SB Nation. Together with our strong focus on growing sponsorship sales and Patreon subscribers, I believe we can get there. I’m grateful for the contributions that our departing team members made in building Secret Base.
Please know that this decision impacts only the Secret Base team, and no other roles at SB Nation have been affected. That said, I recognize that team changes can create uncertainty, and I am here to answer any questions or provide broader context.
Thus far, Godfrey and Yeboah are the Secret Base employees who have publicly announced their exits. Godfrey, who started working for SB Nation in 2011, had been there full-time since 2013, and was the last standing member of Banner Society, posted about this exit on Bluesky, and teased a new project with another SBN and Banner Society alum, Ryan Nanni:
1. It’s graduation day: After 12 years I’m done at Vox Media.
Most of @secretbase.bsky.social will continue on (Banner Society will not)
— Steven Godfrey (@stevengodfrey.bsky.social) February 11, 2025 at 3:10 PM
3. In 2024 myself and @celebrityhottub.bsky.social launched “Who Killed College Football?,” and its success has inspired us to continue pushing the format of audio storytelling.
— Steven Godfrey (@stevengodfrey.bsky.social) February 11, 2025 at 3:16 PM
Something new is coming. If you want to be the first to know: tinyurl.com/5n9xfruh
— Steven Godfrey (@stevengodfrey.bsky.social) February 11, 2025 at 3:17 PM
Yeboah, who had been at SB Nation for more than eight years, announced his exit on Bluesky and YouTube:
After 8 years at Vox Media/SB Nation/Secret Base, I have been laid off. Thank you guys for supporting me throughout the years and I hope you join me for whatever is next.
Secret Base will continue to make great things, I honored to be a part of it.
AA can report that one other behind-the-scenes employee from Secret Base was let go. We’ll include that announcements here if it’s made.
AA can also report that key Secret Base video figure Jon Bois and executive producer/team leader Will Buikema, as well as other important staffers, remain with Secret Base. But the Secret Base team is down to nine or 10 people (depending on how figures are assigned there or to SB Nation more broadly), so this is a cut of more than 20 percent of their staff.
Substantial layoffs began to impact Vox Media around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Vox announced 9% company-wide furloughs in April 2020, with many of those focused on SB Nation, and with their rationale being that most sports events were paused. But those furloughs led to a massive talent exodus later that year, both voluntarily and from layoffs, and a sports site once viewed as near the top of the industry became far more of an afterthought for many.
Since 2020, the blows have continued for SB Nation. The Banner Society launch in 2019 seemed like a strong idea at the time, bringing together their Every Day Should Be Saturday and general SB Nation college football talent under one roof, but it was hamstrung by the furloughs, layoffs, and departures of many from that crew (who have now found success elsewhere with projects such as The Shutdown Fullcast, Split Zone Duo, various books, and more). That site went away for good in 2021, and Godfrey was the last figure associated with it remaining at SB Nation.
Beyond that, SB Nation has had an extremely tumultuous run in executive leadership. After announcing they’d hire an SVP for SB Nation as one of four key editorial groups in July 2019, they named Jermaine Spradley (an internal promotion) SVP over a year later, then added more executives soon after that while still bleeding talent, and saw Spradley leave last January with no clear replacement.
There have been dramatic cuts across SB Nation before this, and well beyond college football. Several of their team sites were axed in 2022, with more wiped out in January 2023 as part of 7% layoffs across Vox, and a podcast network killed last year. A lot of those people, sites, and shows have gone on to success elsewhere. Meanwhile, Vox has asked for donations, tried paid newsletters, made AI deals, and sold off other sites.
On its own, three people laid off at a media site might not be a giant national story. But it’s worth noting that minimizing negative media coverage has often been cited as a reason for dribs-and-drabs cuts. And it’s interesting on that front that Vox has conducted several rounds of smaller layoffs over the past two months, and conducted further rounds of layoffs last year. Combine that with the history of SB Nation cuts in particular, and there’s certainly a noticeable trend here.
We’ll see what Vox does with that plan to “put Secret Base on a path toward operating as a sustainable brand within SB Nation” with their remaining staff.
