ABC News was viewed as a logical home because it would offer Silver a platform for both politics and sportsGETTY IMAGES
ESPN and ABC News yesterday said that FiveThirtyEight is "moving to Disney-owned ABC News after five years," according to Benjamin Mullin of the WALL STREET JOURNAL. ABC News President James Goldston said that taking on FiveThirtyEight is part of net's plans to "fortify its political reporting in advance" of the '18 midterm elections. He said the site’s partnership with ESPN had “run its course for both sides.” Goldston: “What’s really happening here is that FiveThirtyEight is moving to a home that’s better suited to what FiveThirtyEight does. Obviously, FiveThirtyEight also does sports, but the balance of what FiveThirtyEight does is politics.” ABC News and ESPN "declined to disclose the terms of the deal." ESPN acquired FiveThirtyEight in '13, but sources said that the net "decided to cut ties with the site, in part because it wanted to increase ESPN’s focus on sports and because of cost pressures stemming from headwinds in its core cable-TV business." ABC News was "viewed as a logical home for FiveThirtyEight because it would offer" FiveThirtyEight Founder & Editor-in-Chief Nate Silver a "platform for both political and sports journalism" (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 4/18).
