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> Much of FiveThirtyEight’s vital intellectual property — such as the election forecast models — is merely licensed to Disney. This seems odd that Disney would
by prepend 4y ago
> Much of FiveThirtyEight’s vital intellectual property — such as the election forecast models — is merely licensed to Disney.
This seems odd that Disney would buy FiveThirtyEight but not its IP. How common is this?
If I were buying a data journalism company known for its models, that seems like something important to purchase. This seems like a curious contract negotiation and seems like a mistake on Disney’s part. Or a future lawsuit if there’s a difference of opinions.
- enkid 4y agoDisney is a media company that was dabbling in data science because of its name recognition. It almost certainly didn't have the strategic vision to care much about something as nerdy as the intellectual property being used to generate that name recognition.
- netsharc 4y agoI mean, 538 was under the NYTimes.com domain before that, it's not like Nate had to sell, and when he agreed to move to ESPN/Disney, he surely had more of the bargaining power.
- jdlshore 4y agoFiveThirtyEight made a big splash in its 2008 election debut. According to Wikipedia, there were numerous media outlets competing for its content in 2010. That likely gave Silver a lot of leverage. The same is probably true in 2014, when FiveThirtyEight moved from the New York Times to ESPN/Disney. Interestingly, the deal with the NYT was that the entire blog was licensed. For the deal with Disney, it seems like Silver gave up a lot more, and only kept control of the models.