The impact for Panther Digest, remains to be seen.
I’m kind of surprised about this. When Fox Interactive Media (FIM) bought Scout.com nearly 2 years ago, I thought it meant Fox was gearing up for more competition with ESPN across platforms on college sports. With deep pockets behind them, they seemed more stable. Especially as Rivals.com seemed to be looking for a buyer or their own media support.
Instead, it seems that things have gotten very strained. Scout.com has suffered a series of embarrassing losses of affiliates in the last couple of weeks and months. Ohio State’s affiliate left, as did Florida, and then USC. Today, Oklahoma left. These are some of the biggest of the fanbases and subscriber groups. Gone.
You can likely add Texas to that list real soon. The Texas, OSU, Oklahoma and Stanford sites filed a suit against Scout.com and FIM (PDF) in May seeking class action status over the accounting and financial practices.
So the problems at Scout.com is not about a new corporate attitude that stifled the freedom and creativity of the publishers, editors and writers of the sites. It’s about the money. It’s always about the money.
Looking over the suit, the team sites that will most likely be interested in joining and/or head for independent status will be the big sites. Sites that have their own magazine (ex, Michigan, Nebraska, Penn St. and Alabama), since there are some heavy allegations of big accounting irregularities with the allocation between magazine and site.
Scout.com has the financial support to fight and perhaps even successfully defend the lawsuit. The problem is that they will still lose some of their biggest network affiliates. Even as they build new affiliates in their place, they will face increased competition.
More changes a-coming.
And what about that AWFUL software? Funny thing is we (see link) heard they’d be leaving EZboards software and one of the head honchos told us it would be light years before any change was made. If you’re wondering 6-7 weeks means light years.
For Pitt, Scout has been a much better service but if the trend is going to end up with a bunch of indy sites – then ironically thats good news for you because the PantherDigest will also end up the indy route. They have always had a tough time selling premium subs on there anyway. Now if Scout is cheating the publishers – oh man look out.