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Hey. This is an unusual Monday offering but given the circumstances, we hope you understand that it’s the only thing that feels right for us.

On February 11th, our friends and colleagues Steven Godfrey, Tyson Whiting, and Kofie Yeboah were laid off from their jobs at Secret Base.

This is far from the first time we’ve watched the company dismiss our talented and beloved coworkers, but this latest round hits particularly hard, and it’s clear from the response we’ve seen here and elsewhere online that you guys, the Secret Base audience, are just as distressed as we are.

Working for Vox Media means a lot of things. Most importantly, it means that we – Alex, Charlotte, Clara, Jiazhen, Joe, Jon, Phil, Ryan, Seth and Will – can work together at the same team and help each other build the stuff we really, passionately believe in. Stuff you’ve told us you want to see from us.

Working within a major media company allows us to do this for reasons both personal (steady income, benefits, the ability to take vacation days) and professional (music and image licenses, the backing of a legal team, sales staff who get our project sponsored, hardware and equipment, the list goes on). Secret Base was made feasible in the first place because of this arrangement.

We, and you, are now experiencing what else that means. Being part of a major media company, we’re also subject to financial pressures and business whims outside of our control. We’ve lost three exceptionally, uniquely talented people who can’t be replaced, and who we all loved working with, day in and day out, year in and year out. No personnel decision can change the fact that they played major parts in building Secret Base, and they will always be a part of it.

Losing them is painful because of how much we’ll miss them and the work they do. It might be a little less painful if we didn’t believe in this thing as much as we do. Ever since we began planning Secret Base five years ago, our goal has been to build something different from anything else you’ve ever seen in sports media. We had no rivals or aspirational peers to measure ourselves against or try to be better than. We simply wanted to make something completely new and unique for you, the audience.

And then, you actually showed up for it. For that, we’ll always be endlessly thankful. It’s a tremendous honor and privilege to produce things that you’re actually willing to pay us money for. While that money does not deposit directly into our personal accounts, it does wonders for our ability to do this for years to come, and is a major component of the mission: to keep on pushing the envelope creatively to deliver you things you love, and things you won’t find anywhere else.

So if you’re wondering whether your subscription money helps us: absolutely, and significantly. But while we acknowledge that some of you may subscribe for the purpose of supporting us, and are quite grateful for that, we intentionally avoided selling you a Patreon subscription in that way. One immutable, unbreakable rule we established at the beginning was that we would avoid such language in favor of doing whatever we needed to do to give you your money’s worth. Of course, your decision to subscribe or not subscribe is your own, and we fully respect any reason you might have in either direction. We appreciate you enormously, no matter what.

But our promise to you remains the same: if you subscribe to us, whether for a month or a year or longer, we will continue to come through for you and give you something you otherwise never would have gotten. If you’ve enjoyed the ride so far, we can guarantee that there’s lots, lots more ahead.

Love y’all,

Will, Jon, Seth and Ryan on behalf of Secret Base