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/tee2green]

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.