Shiny Media to sell off hard-to-monetize football blogs

UK blog network Shiny Media has officially announced that it will no longer be regularly updating its Who Ate All the Pies English football blog, and is actively looking for a buyer.

Several of Shiny’s other sports blogs have been retired over the past year, with the main reasons being the difficulty of monetizing them, when compared to Shiny’s core technology- and fashion-related sites, and various administrative strains.

In a final post entitled We think it’s all over… (a fond tribute to Kenneth Wolstenholme’s famous commentary of England’s 1966 World Cup victory) editor Ollie Irish writes:

In its current form, as published by Shiny Media, Pies is no more. I won’t go into the reasons why – I’m just the editor, and the decision was not mine – but fans of the site will be happy to know that Pies may still have a future, so watch the web for more news on that.

I’d like to thank all of you out there for your support over the last couple of years. Your contributions helped make Pies a genuine success… Writing for a site like Pies is not much fun without feedback, and you did us proud. Cheers to you.

Pies, and the five Premiership football team-centric blogs, have a strong readership and community spirit, and to this end Chris Price, Shiny’s Managing Director, said, “We are talking to various parties about selling it. We feel that given the right company, it could be very successful.”

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Stating that Shiny is “making money in the other sectors”, Price confirmed that the company was not looking to close any other sites.

Read more on this subject at Brand Republic

(DIsclosure: Andy Merrett writes for several of Shiny Media’s technology blogs)