G/O Media Sells Kotaku, New Owner Promises To Keep Editorial Staff And "Hire More Senior Talent"

G/O Media announced that it sold its radical leftist, anti-reality video game outlet Kotaku to European media company Keleops.

Keleops is the same company that previously purchased Gizmodo from G/O Media last June. The company’s CEO Jean-Guillaume Kleis promised that he plans to retain Kotaku’s current editorial staff and even hire more talent according to a report from Axios. That report also noted that there will be no “immediate strategy shifts” in the short term.

To that point, he shared that after purchasing Gizmodo the outlet’s U.S. monthly audience has doubled compared to last June and its “total audience has grown 400%.” More than half of its revenue comes from affiliate links while the rest comes from display ads and branded content.

Kleis shared, “We expect [Gizmodo] to grow even bigger this year and then next year as well. That's why we wanted to double down on the U.S. and make another significant acquisition.”

READ: Black Fetish Tattoos And The Illusion of Neutrality

In a post on G/O Media’s website CEO Jim Spanfeller revealed why the company sold off nearly all of its properties. It only has one left, The Root, and is trying to offload it. He wrote, “G/O Media is predominantly owned by a Growth Equity firm named Great Hill Partners. Given how both private equity and growth equity work it became clear to our investors that it was time to move on. While the business in general was doing as well or better than the vast majority of its peers it was clear that the hockey stick type growth that was initially planned before Covid and several media recessions and the ongoing issues of the walled gardens (Google, Meta, etc.) was not coming in the near future. This combined with the aforementioned 6 years of ownership suggested that the time was right for GHP to move along.”

He also added, “We will exit having increased shareholder value. A feat that few other companies in our space can claim.”

Later in his message he discussed how writers at his various outlets used the outlets to push their own political and moral agendas, “Often now, the writer wants to choose topics and story angles to match their own specific world view. A practice that often actually works against the very brand building that some would suggest supports such practices. All editorial coverage comes with some level of writer bias but the basic first day story should be as fact based as possible and when the writer does add personal views later in the timeline, that reporting or opinion should be clearly labeled for the reader. All too often we stray from these core practices, and this is as true today in legacy brands as it is in digitally native brands. We certainly saw this up close and personal in the early days at G/O Media when at times there were even arguments about what the core mission of the sites were and who was responsible for defining and supporting those missions.”

What do you make of G/O Media selling Kotaku?

NEXT: Pride In Surrey Founder And J.K. Rowling Hater Imprisoned For 30 Years For Raping A 12-Year-Old