This was mentioned briefly in the article on the backdrop of how the major players are running away from text -- but as some context -- this really has been a bleak summer for sportswriting.

ESPN started by laying off ~100 employees, with the biggest cuts coming to writers in their declining coverage of baseball and hockey.

Fox Sports, who is trying to become the Pepsi to ESPN's Coke, then followed by laying off every writer on staff in their "pivot to video" (go to their home page now, and you will not find a single link to a text piece).

Vice Sports then joined the party last week by closing shop as part of Vice's expansion into international markets at the cost of getting rid of their sports editorial team.

Not sports directly but MTV did the same thing with their writing staff, including a lot of their high profile writers like Holly Anderson.

With all of these being part of the magical "pivot to video," you have to think it's mainly driven by optimistic hopes that video CPMs will rise in a way that display ads have not for publishers over the last 10 years.