FiveThirtyEight may have made its last prediction.
The statistical-analytics site that dabbled in sports, politics, and economics was shut down by ABC News as part of a wave of layoffs Wednesday. The news was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The site shot to prominence when its founder, Nate Silver, correctly predicted the outcome in 49 of 50 states during the 2008 presidential election. The New York Times began licensing the site’s content in 2010 before ESPN bought it in 2013. Parent company Disney moved it to ABC News in 2018, and Silver exited in 2023 after his contract wasn’t renewed by the network.
Politics and elections were the pillars of 538’s coverage, but the site also heavily covered sports, with prediction models in every major sport. It stopped producing sports content in 2023 with Silver’s departure.
Its sports content was sabermetric-heavy, but also featured big-name writers like Chris Herring, who went on to write a bestselling book about the Knicks and now works for ESPN.
At the time of the layoffs, FiveThirtyEight had 15 employees. In 2023, the site had 35 positions before the layoffs that included Silver’s departure.
On his personal website, the site’s cofounder went on to explain why he thought the site ultimately became a casualty of cost-cutting.
“The basic issue is that Disney was never particularly interested in running FiveThirtyEight as a business, even though I think it could have been a good business,” Silver wrote. “Although they were generous in maintaining the site for so long and almost never interfered in our editorial process, the sort of muscle memory a media property builds early in its tenure tends to stick. We had an incredibly talented editorial staff, but we never had enough ‘product’ people or strategy people to help the business grow and sustain itself.”
Some of the website’s intellectual property and models were owned by Silver through his 2023 departure, and it is unknown whether Disney plans to sell any of it or the website itself. An ABC News spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment about a possible sale. Silver did not respond to a request for comment.
