Deadspin’s shadowy new owner has ties to online sports betting, a 404 Media investigation revealed, dropping a big clue about the new direction of the sports outlet. Last month, G/O Media announced it had slashed all of Deadspin’s staff and sold the brand to something called Lineup Publishing, which had no information publicly available except that it was based in Malta. There were no known individuals associated with Lineup until 404’s Jason Koebler and Tedium’s Ernie Smith unmasked its lead investor as Max Noremo by digging up Lineup’s IP address and finding a file with his name on it embedded within the site’s code. Noremo had previously founded a company that specialized in boosting traffic for online casinos and had done a number of interviews about his work in search engine optimization. On Thursday morning, Lineup confirmed Noremo’s involvement in a statement posted to its website, adding that Deadspin would be supported by “partnerships within the sports betting industry.”
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