jetinsider/scout news

[TuscanyTile2]

On February 1, 2017 at 10:41 PM, Maxman said:

The team that was put in place when the MTV guy purchased Scout back from FOX was the original Rivals team. They thought they were going to do the same thing they did back in the day, only bigger. With people paying for it.

We are going to build a huge premium site. And we aren't paying for it. They are.

Except it didn't happen.

I thought they paid like 60 million to Fox to get it back. I didn't look it up, but that is what I remember them saying. The guy was like I will fly to you to talk about JetNation. They had a crazy budget. So they paid 60 million, shelled out all this money to buy \ lease sites and they went for 9 million in bankruptcy. Ouch.

 

They had a budget in the millions and you didn't sell?!  Even though JN is the best forum site I've ever been on, I'd be angry at you if you passed on 6 figure (7??) type deal. 

[Sperm Edwards]

33 minutes ago, TuscanyTile2 said:

They had a budget in the millions and you didn't sell?!  Even though JN is the best forum site I've ever been on, I'd be angry at you if you passed on 6 figure (7??) type deal. 

That $60m was for them to buy Scout, not to buy JI or JN type sites. 

As best I gather, the really big paydays to forum owners like @Maxman were to come from future revenue splitting, from increased ad and membership revenue that would come in, as the result Scout being this go-to hub for all teams. Except it didn't happen. 

There may have been a bit of up front cash and there may not have been any at all. Even if there was, I'd be shocked if it was near the huge payout range you're thinking. They bought up a lot of sites; there wouldn't have been enough cash, after buying Scout, to go then pay that for an active fan site for every pro team in every major sport (and perhaps at the college level as well), plus the costs of web development (such as it was lol), marketing, etc.

My guess is fan forum sites (like JI) were mostly bought with such future revenue-sharing promises that never materialized. If it was major up-front money they'd have just made Maxman a dollar-offer without the need to sales pitch him in person into a website-now/money-later deal.

[#27TheDominator]

3 hours ago, Sperm Edwards said:

That $60m was for them to buy Scout, not to buy JI or JN type sites. 

As best I gather, the really big paydays to forum owners like @Maxman were to come from future revenue splitting, from increased ad and membership revenue that would come in, as the result Scout being this go-to hub for all teams. Except it didn't happen. 

There may have been a bit of up front cash and there may not have been any at all. Even if there was, I'd be shocked if it was near the huge payout range you're thinking. They bought up a lot of sites; there wouldn't have been enough cash, after buying Scout, to go then pay that for an active fan site for every pro team in every major sport (and perhaps at the college level as well), plus the costs of web development (such as it was lol), marketing, etc.

My guess is fan forum sites (like JI) were mostly bought with such future revenue-sharing promises that never materialized. If it was major up-front money they'd have just made Maxman a dollar-offer without the need to sales pitch him in person into a website-now/money-later deal.

There had to be up front money.  I'm sure it wasn't millions, but if it was all revenue sharing, then sooth would not have let that place go to sh*t so quickly. 

[jason423]

5 hours ago, Sperm Edwards said:

That $60m was for them to buy Scout, not to buy JI or JN type sites. 

As best I gather, the really big paydays to forum owners like @Maxman were to come from future revenue splitting, from increased ad and membership revenue that would come in, as the result Scout being this go-to hub for all teams. Except it didn't happen. 

There may have been a bit of up front cash and there may not have been any at all. Even if there was, I'd be shocked if it was near the huge payout range you're thinking. They bought up a lot of sites; there wouldn't have been enough cash, after buying Scout, to go then pay that for an active fan site for every pro team in every major sport (and perhaps at the college level as well), plus the costs of web development (such as it was lol), marketing, etc.

My guess is fan forum sites (like JI) were mostly bought with such future revenue-sharing promises that never materialized. If it was major up-front money they'd have just made Maxman a dollar-offer without the need to sales pitch him in person into a website-now/money-later deal.

I think this was more along the lines of the way things worked. At the time they were willing to do different style of deals depending on level of involvement but I tend to think that things worked a bit like a deal where you sell and stay on as a "consultant" managing certain parts of the site and remaining a public face of sorts. You get something up front and from there the revenue "explosions" would be paying you off year by year in a far greater way that you ever could do on your own. I dont blame anyone for doing it but it is kind of a shame to see what were pretty vibrant communities get swallowed up and then just thrown away. JI basically became an internet infomercial for discounted memberships and others more generic clickbait writing to fill a void in some platforms. Very few of those acquisitions seem to be for the better of everyone.

[Maxman]

19 hours ago, SAR I said:

Any Jets post here?  Players or front office?

SAR I

Not sure of any players. But front office yes. Just reading though.

[Maxman]

17 hours ago, TuscanyTile2 said:

They had a budget in the millions and you didn't sell?!  Even though JN is the best forum site I've ever been on, I'd be angry at you if you passed on 6 figure (7??) type deal. 

No they weren't going to buy an individual site for millions. If that was the case, I would have been long gone!

They paid 60 million to buy scout back.

[Maxman]

16 hours ago, Sperm Edwards said:

That $60m was for them to buy Scout, not to buy JI or JN type sites. 

As best I gather, the really big paydays to forum owners like @Maxman were to come from future revenue splitting, from increased ad and membership revenue that would come in, as the result Scout being this go-to hub for all teams. Except it didn't happen. 

There may have been a bit of up front cash and there may not have been any at all. Even if there was, I'd be shocked if it was near the huge payout range you're thinking. They bought up a lot of sites; there wouldn't have been enough cash, after buying Scout, to go then pay that for an active fan site for every pro team in every major sport (and perhaps at the college level as well), plus the costs of web development (such as it was lol), marketing, etc.

My guess is fan forum sites (like JI) were mostly bought with such future revenue-sharing promises that never materialized. If it was major up-front money they'd have just made Maxman a dollar-offer without the need to sales pitch him in person into a website-now/money-later deal.

Yes, they said they would buy us outright. But they did pitch things the way you outlined. Partner with them and then your site will triple in size and be worth much more.

I have absolutely zero idea how much they would have given us outright. Just didn't sign the NDA so I guess I will never know.  really didn't want their offer because I knew they are going to ruin things. I don't like ruining things.

[Maxman]

10 hours ago, jason423 said:

I think this was more along the lines of the way things worked. At the time they were willing to do different style of deals depending on level of involvement but I tend to think that things worked a bit like a deal where you sell and stay on as a "consultant" managing certain parts of the site and remaining a public face of sorts. You get something up front and from there the revenue "explosions" would be paying you off year by year in a far greater way that you ever could do on your own. I dont blame anyone for doing it but it is kind of a shame to see what were pretty vibrant communities get swallowed up and then just thrown away. JI basically became an internet infomercial for discounted memberships and others more generic clickbait writing to fill a void in some platforms. Very few of those acquisitions seem to be for the better of everyone.

Yes, they told me that they require daily videos in their contracts because their crack sales team was getting record breaking CPMs.

Nobody needs to see my face. Doing it daily is cruel and unusual punishment.

[Sperm Edwards]

On 2/21/2017 at 10:22 AM, #27TheDominator said:

There had to be up front money.  I'm sure it wasn't millions, but if it was all revenue sharing, then sooth would not have let that place go to sh*t so quickly. 

Oh I don't think there was literally zero up front, but the big money was certainly going to be in the form of the great things that await. Same premise as franchising oneself out: better to have 15% of $100m than 100% of $3m (which also comes with doing all the work). 

There's no way it was millions or they'd have surely thrown that carrot out there just to entice someone to signing an NDA to listen to a meeting. All that was thrown out there without such secrecy promises was the promise of future promises (i.e. How much more he'd make by being part of their precious - and ultimately/later bankrupt - larger umbrella). 

He was very excited, as I understand, about features that would be and site design changes that would come. I wouldn't equate trying and failing with claiming no attempts were made in the first place. That's more rookie of the Hackenberg type of allegations . Or when Pee Wee Herman fell off his bike and then said, "I meant to do that."

[Bruce Harper]

On 2/1/2017 at 6:19 PM, win4ever said:

Here is the problem with Scout (mainly because I had a Scout membership a few years ago for baseball because I liked their prospect scouting reports):

1)  They charge a premium (or at least they did) for discount news.  If I need to read a three sentence news break, I can read Twitter for free.

2) They lack original content- Almost all of their news is just news.  You can pick that up anywhere, google, twitter, espn, anywhere basically.  There is no reason for anyone to actually read those articles because you can't glean anything from it.  It's utterly useless, without any insight.  There are only a few sites that actually have decent reporting.  The Yankees were one of them back in the day because they had a good reporter that wrote scouting reports on a ton of prospects (which wasn't the case normally back in the day).  

3)  There is nothing that brings you back, no weekly series, no recurring article that you can't find anywhere else, nor an easy format.  Bleacher Report used to be worthless to anyone, but they got their act together by consolidating news, so you can get a ton of information on a single screen.  Scout doesn't have that, it has a webpage for each article.

4)  Lack of discussion- Now this is something they admittedly tried to correct and failed (with JI as an example) because there is very little discussion based on the content.  Some of the more active sites have hundreds of replies on any given topic, so if you don't go there for the article, you go there for the reactions.  Heck, half the time I click on Reddit stories, I'm just there to read the reactions, let alone the article.  

And still worth 9 million? Sheesh.  

I wouldn't be surprised if it also had something to do with that douche who referred to himself in the third person in his posts.

[Sperm Edwards]

12 hours ago, Maxman said:

Yes, they said they would buy us outright. But they did pitch things the way you outlined. Partner with them and then your site will triple in size and be worth much more.

I have absolutely zero idea how much they would have given us outright. Just didn't sign the NDA so I guess I will never know.  really didn't want their offer because I knew they are going to ruin things. I don't like ruining things.

Oh no? You ruined my relationship with the Ginger Of Bavaria.

[Jet Fan RI]

So is/are the Scout site/sites completely dead, offline, out of existence? Or was it/them, as in many bankruptcy cases, taken over and kept going by another entity?

[Jet Fan RI]

That douche has (or had) an existence on another fan site, although I haven't seen a post from him in a long time. That may be because I put him on ignore though. And yes, he was posting in green type. Must be a tribute to his Packer fandom.

[#27TheDominator]

It is still technically there.  My favorite ******* thing about that place is that five of the last ten threads are @jetsrule128 posting about Victor Ochi and other practice squad players. Why doesn't he ******* post about Big Brother over there?

[Sperm Edwards]

28 minutes ago, Bruce Harper said:

I wouldn't be surprised if it also had something to do with that douche who referred to himself in the third person in his posts.

 

 

[win4ever]

3 hours ago, Bruce Harper said:

I wouldn't be surprised if it also had something to do with that douche who referred to himself in the third person in his posts.

He was obnoxious from the start, I remember him from years before the merger happened.  

I remember after the '12 draft, he kept going on and on about how he does scouting work and how the Jets got a steal with Stephen Hill, how angry he is the Packers passed on him for Nick Perry I believe.  

I thought he was a fairly well informed guy, but it got to his head that he just had to assert his opinion as fact everywhere.  He was probably responsible for like 50% of the posts there anyway.

[HighPitch]

1 hour ago, win4ever said:

He was obnoxious from the start, I remember him from years before the merger happened.  

I remember after the '12 draft, he kept going on and on about how he does scouting work and how the Jets got a steal with Stephen Hill, how angry he is the Packers passed on him for Nick Perry I believe.  

I thought he was a fairly well informed guy, but it got to his head that he just had to assert his opinion as fact everywhere.  He was probably responsible for like 50% of the posts there anyway.

Who r we talking about? Green Jets Ham?

[Jet Fan RI]

17 minutes ago, HighPitch said:

Who r we talking about? Green Jets Ham?

No. Hyatt (with a TM superscript).

Edit: And Ham is (was) also on that other fan site, but he also hasn't posted in a while.

[chirorob]

On 2/3/2017 at 9:46 AM, nycdan said:

I do miss some of the truly epic -palooza threads we had at JI back when it was still a thing.  But I was splitting my time between both of these boards for a while when the Scout thing went down so it was an easy transition for me to just hunker down here and never look back.  And then the flag football tournament sealed the deal.  We really need to do something like that again, Phil, even if it's just a pickup game.

The only one I really miss was the one Fishhooked had.

[HighPitch]

right hyatt. very annoying.

like being 10 years old and meeting your moms new boyfriend who immediately thinks hes your dad

[rex-n-effect]

Not having to see mainejet's dead ******* deer was worth losing JI for all eternity. 

[Bruce Harper]

19 hours ago, win4ever said:

He was obnoxious from the start, I remember him from years before the merger happened.  

I remember after the '12 draft, he kept going on and on about how he does scouting work and how the Jets got a steal with Stephen Hill, how angry he is the Packers passed on him for Nick Perry I believe.  

I thought he was a fairly well informed guy, but it got to his head that he just had to assert his opinion as fact everywhere.  He was probably responsible for like 50% of the posts there anyway.

And 50% of the people leaving there for here.

[Jet Fan RI]

55 minutes ago, Bruce Harper said:

And 50% of the people leaving there for here.

Bet it was a lot higher percentage than that. After all, it did go bankrupt.

[win4ever]

22 hours ago, Jet Fan RI said:

No. Hyatt (with a TM superscript).

Edit: And Ham is (was) also on that other fan site, but he also hasn't posted in a while.

Lol yup, that guy.  Not sure why he felt the need to TM the name.  He also wrote in like green font with alternating sizes to make a point too.  

5 hours ago, Bruce Harper said:

And 50% of the people leaving there for here.

I think the migration method is complicated, but I think it's really just JI that dispersed.  Scout was a barren land to begin with, same three people talking among themselves.  

I checked out TGG forums as well, in fact that was the first place I went to even before joining JI because it was the most active to me at the time.  Unfortunately, they had this horrible idea of putting everything into one umbrella thread if it remotely involved a player.  So I would write some analysis (not breakdowns), and immediately see that it's buried on page 38 of a player discussion page and felt it was stupid.  It curtailed discussion because while the player is the same, the point of discussion was different.  So I think some people went there, and some to the hampur website as well.  

It'd be interesting to see the breakdowns of where people dispersed to, because I think each of the options after JI had interesting characteristics.  

[Jet Fan RI]

24 minutes ago, win4ever said:

Lol yup, that guy.  Not sure why he felt the need to TM the name.  He also wrote in like green font with alternating sizes to make a point too.  

I think the migration method is complicated, but I think it's really just JI that dispersed.  Scout was a barren land to begin with, same three people talking among themselves.  

I checked out TGG forums as well, in fact that was the first place I went to even before joining JI because it was the most active to me at the time.  Unfortunately, they had this horrible idea of putting everything into one umbrella thread if it remotely involved a player.  So I would write some analysis (not breakdowns), and immediately see that it's buried on page 38 of a player discussion page and felt it was stupid.  It curtailed discussion because while the player is the same, the point of discussion was different.  So I think some people went there, and some to the hampur website as well.  

It'd be interesting to see the breakdowns of where people dispersed to, because I think each of the options after JI had interesting characteristics.  

Actually, it was more like 50 guys. And now even they have left Scout, and wound up on the same fan site as Hyatt and Ham.

[#27TheDominator]

I don't know where you guys have been, but 50% of JI came to *********.com in 2005. Another 50% came in 2010.

[Warfish]

1 hour ago, win4ever said:

Lol yup, that guy.  Not sure why he felt the need to TM the name.  He also wrote in like green font with alternating sizes to make a point too.  

I think the migration method is complicated, but I think it's really just JI that dispersed.  Scout was a barren land to begin with, same three people talking among themselves.  

I checked out TGG forums as well, in fact that was the first place I went to even before joining JI because it was the most active to me at the time.  Unfortunately, they had this horrible idea of putting everything into one umbrella thread if it remotely involved a player.  So I would write some analysis (not breakdowns), and immediately see that it's buried on page 38 of a player discussion page and felt it was stupid.  It curtailed discussion because while the player is the same, the point of discussion was different.  So I think some people went there, and some to the hampur website as well.  

It'd be interesting to see the breakdowns of where people dispersed to, because I think each of the options after JI had interesting characteristics.  

The TM signifies excellence.

[Snell41]

HYATTTM
 

 
 

Smartest guy in the trailer park syndrome.


Sent from my iPhone using JetNation.com mobile app

[SMC]

JN4L

[darook]

I didn't mind the TM in Hyatt.  I just think that anyone on a message board who constantly refers to himself in the 3rd person in every freaking post, need to wind up like the deer on MaineJet's sig. 

[munchmemory]

Just went over to see the site.  On 1/11, Sooth announced a "Flash Sale" which offered an enticing "nine months for the price of one".  Good Lord.

[IntoTheGreen]

I was mostly a lurker on JI and loved all the draft discussion. When it died out I stopped following the draft as close. After years I finally came across this site and I've been lurking again over the last month. Felt this thread was an appropriate space to post. It's great seeing many of the same names discussing Jets/NFL draft as passionately as I remember!

[The Crusher]

6 hours ago, #27TheDominator said:

I don't know where you guys have been, but 50% of JI came to *********.com in 2005. Another 50% came in 2010.

More like 2008, but yep. 

[The Crusher]

12 minutes ago, IntoTheGreen said:

I was mostly a lurker on JI and loved all the draft discussion. When it died out I stopped following the draft as close. After years I finally came across this site and I've been lurking again over the last month. Felt this thread was an appropriate space to post. It's great seeing many of the same names discussing Jets/NFL draft as passionately as I remember!

Welcome. Glad you made it. 

[jetophile]

On 2/2/2017 at 11:18 AM, HighPitch said:

Scout was just awful.  I wish i knew the details of why sean did it and how much he got. 

That dud Hyatt.... Good grief what an annoying poster. 

A lot of fun  guys s went to the hampur.  So did a lot of dopes.  No bigger dope than the founder of that site though. Internet tough guy is an understatement. Huge pus in real life for sure.  Just couldnt handle his dumb threats and claims of jailtime and mafia connections.  2 bit street thug at best i wouldnt hire that dope to even mow my property

OK, I just have to ask this. Your avatar. Are you at the Golden Globes?