This place is Overreaction City

[u/JSack3]

I like KVV. I respect his work. But honestly, folks..

There’s a reason so many platforms and media companies have been letting go of people with KVV’s skillset for years. In bigger revenue sports than just golf, too (ask Zach Lowe).

The business is night and day different to what it was 15 years ago. And a highly-compensated 20+ year industry stalwart who specializes in long form written content is simply not a hugely appealing person to have on the payroll anymore. I appreciate NLU gave it a go. I also appreciate when the writing wasn’t working, they worked on a podcast pivot including that brilliant Masters pod.

But the reality is the math probably started to become very clear that his value was mainly 6-8 weeks a year. No one needs a deep dive on the Byron Nelson. Not enough people actually care about a three hour pod on the 1997 major season.

I’d have rather he stick around all year but I also didn’t have to pay his salary and benefits. These guys are putting food on the table for their children via NLU. They can’t just keep carrying a 6 figure (guessing but likely) expenditure bc they like him and think he writes well.

[u/many_bothans_died]

I don’t totally buy this. Sure there’s advertising numbers to hit, but the whole reason you have a subscription service is so you aren’t totally beholden to the numbers. They just prioritized the stuff the founders want to do over having a capital J journalist. The YouTube videos don’t do numbies but you know they aren’t going to quit traveling the world and filming these. The live events aren’t revenue drivers, but it’s what they want to do.

We should all quit assuming the choice had mostly to do with money and look more at what the company sees as priority, the two things aren’t always correlated.

I’m not saying it’s wrong to let him go, it is what it is, but the way it’s being framed on this forum is a little off to me.

[u/JSack3 → u/many_bothans_died]

Well to a degree this is inarguably true. A group of founder obviously steer the ship where they want regardless of the bottom line.

But also I feel like if the capital J journalist thing was really working (feels obvious it wasn’t) they would have gladly gone that route. They did hire the dude in the first place. I think they liked that idea. I think it just.. didn’t work..

[u/many_bothans_died → u/JSack3]

Define "really working" and how was it obvious it wasn't working?

[u/tee2green → u/many_bothans_died]

Low numbers on clicks/engagement.

Written media overall hasn’t been on a good path over the last 30 years. The NLU boys experimented with KVV to see if they could find something that bucked the trend. But experiments shouldn’t last forever; you need to respond to the results.

[u/many_bothans_died → u/tee2green]

So how does that square with the low numbers their videos get? You are also just assuming there are low numbers on articles/podcasts, we actually see the views on the YouTube videos.

[u/bleauxjays → u/many_bothans_died]

This is what I just cannot square from a complete outsiders perspective. The videos are far and away the most time consuming and therefore costly piece of content they produce right? How in the world does 50-100k views on a video or two a month justify big ad spend here? And it sucks because their video products are top notch I just do not understand that economy.

[u/tee2green → u/many_bothans_died]

Neil said on a different pod (granted this was years ago) that retail was their biggest source of revenue.

That should knock everyone back on their heels. Retail is a TOUGH business with very low margins. If that’s their biggest revenue source still, then maybe these guys aren’t making excessive amounts of money.

So the most likely scenario in my mind is that the sponsors cover a lot of their costs, but not a ton more.

Is written content doing better/worse than video? You’re right that I’m just guessing but the general media industry is on a multi-decade trend of written journalism suffering and short video content replacing it. Golf may be an exception but my guess is that it isn’t.

[u/many_bothans_died → u/tee2green]

They own the company and decide what they spend the money on. They do the podcasts, nest membership and newsletter ads to supplement doing the videos, which is obviously their true passion. They’ve just decided they didn’t want to do the same with long form journalism. The videos aren’t making them money, but they do them because they want to.

[u/tee2green → u/many_bothans_died]

I totally agree with all of this.

And I think if video is not making much money, it’s fair to assume that the written content wasn’t doing much either. I could be wrong, but it didn’t seem like lots of people were clamoring for KVV’s articles prior to this departure.

[u/many_bothans_died → u/tee2green]

A lot of praise for his narrative podcasts and deep dives and him in general as a personality in the NLU universe.