As of Friday June 16, Yahoo Esports will close its doors and no longer be updated. It follows Verizon’s $4.5 billion acquisition of Yahoo and it becomes part of Oath.
The statement from Travis Gafford, Head of Esports Media at Yahoo Esports, states that Yahoo Sports is to become part of Oath and as part of the transition “they are focusing on aligning with the new company strategy and are focused on growing the Yahoo Sports brand”.
The message from Travis is heartfelt and goes to thank Yahoo, the esports community and the entire team over at Yahoo Esports. With regards to Yahoo, one of the only non-endemic esports media portals to truly embrace esports he commented: “I would like to extend my gratitude to all the individuals at Yahoo who decided to make esports an initiative at the company. From the folks who presented and approved the idea, to the engineers and project managers who built the site, and the Yahoo Sports team who hired the first few members of what would become our media team.”
It comes a shock to many in the esports world as Yahoo had truly begun to become one of the most recognised and well respected spaces for esports media. The video content produced on the Esports side was arguably second to none, with experts across a multitude of games providing high quality content on a regular basis.
It leaves well respected contributors such as Kelsey Moser currently without a home but it would be unsurprising if that remained the case for too long. As one media site disappears, we’ve already seen the emergence of Cybersport.com and the space continues to look busy. Whether or not there’ll be more casualties in months to come remains to be seen, but with a big name like Yahoo falling, esports mustn’t panic.
Esports Insider says: Sad news as we feel that Verizon has truly missed a trick with this. They may or may not regret their decision in the future but on a positive note, most content contributors have built up a great reputation and their work will surely be appreciated elsewhere.
