UK-based sports website publisher GRV Media is aiming to create 100 new jobs and reach two billion page views in 2025.
The company publishes sites including Bloody Elbow (about Mixed Martial Arts), The Boot Room, United In Focus, The Chelsea Chronicle, The Tennis Gazette and Rousing the Kop. It sold several entertainment sites last year to concentrate on its sports brands.
Co-founder and executive chairman Vic Daniels told Press Gazette that in January page views were up 51% year on year, turnover from GRV’s publishing business was up 167.1% and pre-tax profits were six times higher than the same month in 2024.
GRV Media was founded in 2002 (initially named after its football website Here Is The City, or HITC) and makes money though advertising on its own sites and selling advertising technology other publishers. It is also a technology and IT supplier. It said total revenue in January was up 71.8% year on year.
GRV Media does not publish full accounts on Companies House as a smaller company.
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GRV bought MMA site Bloody Elbow in March and took it from 1.3 million page views the month before the acquisition to 25 million in November (helped by several major fights) according to Daniels. Some 90% of page views were from the US.
In October GRV bought US-based sites NBA Analysis and NFL Analysis. The NBA brand totalled four million page views in January after having “almost no traffic” last summer, according to Daniels.
Also last year GRV launched two new sites covering golf and tennis, which Daniels said have gained “significant traction”. They received a combined 5.5 million unique users and 14 million page views in January.
Daniels said that the goal of reaching two billion page views across GRV’s sports sites in 2025 could be met by acquiring several sites and setting up additional new ones as well.
Asked about the risk of relying on page views and advertising while platforms like Google change their algorithms with no notice, Daniels responded: “Google constantly seek to improve the quality of content that it displays to readers. There’ll be more and more core updates. At the end of the day now, we don’t care about core updates. We’re not interested in core updates. We used to panic. Everyone used to panic. Some people still panic. There’s so many of the damn things, and what’s the point panicking? It’s not changed anything.
“You shouldn’t really be worrying about what you do, you should be sticking to your mission and making sure that your content is good quality. Because if you’re doing that, and you’re up to date with all the SEO requirements, at the end of the day, you’ll be fine.”
He admitted that GRV sites don’t always get it right and said one football brand was put into “intensive care” after a “substantial reduction” in Google traffic in November. “And guess what? It’s now come back… And that’s the beauty of having a number of sites. If you get hit, you can actually reallocate resources if you need to, fix it and then bring it back.”
Aim to increase GRV Media headcount by two-thirds by end of 2025
GRV Media currently employs 150 people. Many of the 100 new hires planned for this year are intended to be journalists and SEO professionals, as well as tech and other support staff. Daniels said there had been 12 new hires for January and February already.
So far this year Daniels has appealed on Linkedin for journalists who are expert in F1, MotoGP, MLS, NFL, Rugby League, Rugby Union or EFL. He is also aiming to increase the publisher’s SEO team from 20 to 30 people this year, saying they are “totally embedded in the business – in some cases running sites”.
He told Press Gazette: “We’re expanding as a business. If we’re going to hit our ambitious targets, we’re going to need to get more people on.”
He added: “We are starting to attract a different quality of people. So in the old days, people would come and join us and after three or four years they’d go on to Reach or National World or Talksport or Ladbible or whatever. It’s completely reversed now… So now, I think we’re punching above our weight. We’re making a bit of noise, and we’re starting to get some really, really good quality, strong candidates through.”
Last year GRV Media launched its “Writer Lab”, which is run by a team sitting inside the SEO team. Young journalists can take part in a paid programme with the possibility of staying on as a full-time employee.
Daniels said the Writer Lab was launched “as a reaction to the concerns I had about the quality of candidates coming in from universities.
“I’ve been pretty vocal about my belief that universities are failing kids and that they are actually preparing them for jobs that don’t exist. So we decided that we would have to start to grow our own.”
The Writer Lab training also began to be used for older journalists who may not have reskilled into digital at previous jobs. It has become part of GRV’s recruitment and induction process and new hires tend to stay with it for a couple of weeks. Finally, Daniels said, journalists within the business can also be retrained if they have fallen into bad habits.
He said it has become a “vital part of our business” and that it has also begun reaching out to universities to take part in Q&As or modules on sports journalism degrees.
“We’re trying to ensure that these youngsters when they come out, understand what they’re getting in for. Understand why organisations like us exist – we’re there actually to make money, it’s a commercial business and they need to understand that if they’re coming into it.”
The Writer Lab could also begin to bring in revenue by creating content and running training and development for third-parties.
GRV has been an entirely remote business since launch. Daniels himself is British but based in Rio de Janeiro, overlooking Copacabana beach. He argued that working at home can be a culture shock and isn’t for everybody, but said it has been good for productivity at GRV.
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