ABC AmerisourceBergen Corp

By Benjamin Mullin 

The list of suitors for Nate Silver's data-driven website FiveThirtyEight has narrowed to a few, as the statistics guru prepares to move on from a nearly five-year tie-up with Walt Disney's Co.'s ESPN.

The final contenders include ABC News, The Athletic website and The Atlantic, according to people familiar with the matter. ABC News, another Disney unit, is a logical home for FiveThirtyEight, one of the people said, because Mr. Silver's expertise in polling and political analysis would be especially useful as midterm elections approach this fall. Early on, the site became known for its presidential election forecasts.

The sale process, which has stretched for months, is expected to conclude in the coming weeks, one of the people said. The deadline for submitting bids passed last week.

ESPN decided to explore a sale of FiveThirtyEight last year due to a variety of factors. Chief among them was a desire by the company to increase the site's focus on sports and take a harder look at expenses at a time when cable TV networks, including ESPN, are under pressure from cord-cutting, the people said.

"FiveThirtyEight is a tremendous asset to ESPN," said Connor Schell, executive vice president of content at ESPN. "We've long had conversations about whether there are better ways to support FiveThirtyEight's non-sports content, and those conversations have accelerated both in contract renewal discussions with Nate and with the 2018 midterm elections approaching. We are working in concert with Nate and his team to find the best ongoing home for FiveThirtyEight. Data and analytics remain an important part of ESPN's sports storytelling."

ESPN bought the site in 2013, but Mr. Silver retained ownership of the statistical models used in its journalism.

Each finalist would be a very different home for Mr. Silver. The Atlantic is a leading magazine and digital publisher, The Athletic is a subscription-focused sports company, and ABC News would offer Mr. Silver and his team broad TV exposure. In the case of ABC, the deal would be a transition to a corporate sibling, not a sale.

Other companies that were earlier in the mix to acquire FiveThirtyEight but are no longer in the running include CNN, Bloomberg, The Washington Post and Bleacher Report, according to people close to the discussions.

Sports-focused site The Big Lead has earlier reported on the suitors.

FiveThirtyEight, which has a staff of more than 30 journalists, is a small financial enterprise whose biggest value may be its political and sports coverage. Potential buyers have been told it is losing about $6 million annually on revenue of about $3 million, according to one person familiar with the sale discussions.

People familiar with FiveThirtyEight's operations say the financial profile of the site is partly a result of ESPN's lack of attention to developing the company as a stand-alone business. ESPN struggled to monetize the larger audience for the site during the 2016 presidential election cycle, because politics isn't a core competency for the sports network, one of the people said.

A person close to ESPN said the company does not break out FiveThirtyEight's financials separately and believes the site has been valuable to ESPN as a whole.

FiveThirtyEight's audience has fallen off after the presidential election. The site, which reached nearly 21 million unique visitors in November 2016, averaged between 4 million and 6 million unique visitors a month over the past year, according to comScore.

The losses were a turnoff for some suitors. In other cases, Mr. Silver didn't see a good fit. He is also interested in deals that would keep FiveThirtyEight's team relatively intact, according to a person familiar with his thinking, because he feels responsible for the employees.

Still, FiveThirtyEight has attracted multiple suitors. With the 2018 and 2020 elections coming up, Mr. Silver has touted the company's authority on electoral data to potential buyers. FiveThirtyEight's brand of data journalism has also attracted a distinctive audience that is valuable to advertisers, a person close to FiveThirtyEight said.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 01, 2018 13:49 ET (18:49 GMT)

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