Vice launching a sports channel

Vice, the Montreal-based magazine and international media empire, is launching a sports channel -- Vice Sports, natch -- in June, in time for the World Cup of soccer. 

Vice describes it as “a deep dive into the drama that surrounds sports before and after the great moments on the field.”

According to a post on Streamingmedia.com, Vice is also adding new content to its new food channel, Munchies. The enterprise's YouTube channel has close to 7 million subscribers and its HBO series had just been renewed for a third season.

Vice co-founder and CEO Shane Smith, who had clearly started his NewFront celebration early, declared that “upfronts are weird,” because one-third of the people in the room were simply curious what Vice was doing, one-third were journalists looking to pick the company apart, and one-third would give them money. 

“I believe we’re the first platform-agnostic company out there,” Smith said. “All we care about is that we make good content.” 

“We don’t have a f*cking algorithm. We have 5,000 contributors around the world,” Smith declared.